Month: January 2026

Thursday was a snow day here, because we were gifted about fourteen inches of snow over the course of twenty four hours. Then Friday was a pre planned PA Day for teachers to work on their report cards, and that rolled us nice a smoothly into the regularly scheduled weekend. All that to say that right am this morning was full of tears, tantrums, wobbly children shrieking about hating school, and not wanting to go. My spouse was car pooling today and was able to leave prior to the big theatrical elements of this morning’s meltdown. While it was fun to be off for so long, the pay off at the end is always going to be a resistance to going back to school. Those crocodile tears get real big & juicy around here. The level of shrillness goes way, way up too. We meted out a few extra hugs, a couple of pauses, some delays on the walk to the doors, but eventually they all went in, and I got the dog to the farm for his walk with Gracie-Mae. The world is right — again.

I’ve got loads of laundry to do. A kitchen to clean. Floors to vacuum. Maybe even some mopping to do. A general tidy up would not go amiss. We went to the cottage for the weekend. So that involved a lot of driving, but it also means piles of stuff that came home, and has not been properly put away by my kids, and spouse. I come home, I unpack immediately, then carry on. Not these three. They come in, dump piles of stuff every where, go relax, and just leave stuff for days, weeks, or months; left in bags, suitcases, and piles untouched. Gets under my skin like you wouldn’t believe. But then again 8 have full access to my clothes, and things because I sorted them out upon arrival..if I have forgotten anything I know immediately. It could be weeks before they realize they’ve left an item at the cottage, which they now desperately desire to have. Oh well. Act fast and you can catch extended family before they leave to fetch it home for you. Wait a month to look, and that possibility is gone, gone, gone.

I have some errands to run outside of the house tomorrow. I’m just returning some sharps to the pharmacy, and picking up a prescription. Nothing too fancy. Maybe I’ll get some gas so that we can go climbing without fear of running out of gas! Who knows, the day is wide open until I learn otherwise.

Today is Domestic Duties Monday, so I have things to do around here. I’d like to clean the toilets and sinks too. Lots of household chores for me to pick away at if I’m feeling frisky. Although I generally prefer to do the really persnickety stuff when the weather is better. I like to sit in the sun when I take a break from cleaning, not stare out the window at falling snow, icicles and dirty snowbanks.

I’m going to clean until school ends, or I get a phone call to pick up my youngest who is having a tough morning going back to school after too much time off. Wish us all luck.

Sore hands, back, shoulders, and arms are my reward to taking all the weight off of the back deck. It’s got to come down at some point, just not now while there is both a functioning hot tub, and a full 100 lbs propane tank underneath it. Not a good look to drop several thousand pounds of wood, steel, and ice onto an explosive fuel source for the BBQ. I’d rather not die in a fire ball of gas rapidly expanding.

I didn’t sleep all that well either due to the muscle aches. That and my dog trying to box me out of my own bed. He wiggles and writhes his way across the bed to be touching me, and before you know it he is full court pressing against me. Makes me too hot, and makes it difficult to readjust my legs, and sleeping position. Means ultimately that he gets kicked during the night when he gets too close. So I swapped sides of the bed at some random point last night and confused him. He moved back to where he should have been trying to re establish contact, and I moved back to my original spot once he did that. I slept much better afterwards.

So the Buffalo Bills lost a squeaker of a game in OT, but a lone field goal. Too bad. Seahawks had a massive blow out game versus the 49’ers. 41 to 6. Yikes, what a way to go out.

I need to blast my back and shoulders with heated bubbles in the hot tub. I forget where my Voltaren is, so warm water therapy it will be then! Happy lazy Sunday morning to you.

Had a real nasty drive yesterday evening, and would you look at that, it’s still snowing! Blowing snow, high winds, reduced visibility, slow moving traffic, and borderline motion sickness from the moving snow flakes in my head lights. Thanks! I hate it.

I still feel a little on edge from the drive, and I warned everybody it was coming, nobody listened. Terrible time of year to need to go out and about. Unless you absolutely have to drive — don’t bother. White knuckle drives are unpleasant at best, and catastrophic at worst.

No climbing today, which sort of sucks. The kids shoes are only going to fit for so long! I don’t have much of anything planned for today. A lazy Saturday lay ahead. The only plus was that we didn’t get a second foot of snow with last night’s storm. I think it was only an additional five to ten centimeters. The roads weren’t too bad when they were visible.

To have two in a month is crazy in my opinion. Plus next month we have the Family Day holiday, and probably another PA Day to boot! I need to double check that last but, but my general exasperation still stands. I don’t remember having this many days off each school year in my youth, but then I don’t remember much about my day to day life as a child either. But that’s a whole different discussion. Right now, my focus is the first Friday PA Day of 2026. The next one comes on the last Friday of the month, just in time for a righteous Groundhogs day viewing! Same day — again!?! Waaaah…

Seriously though, the kids kind of slept in a little bit, but not enough to be of any use to me. Luckily there isn’t any new snow accumulation to deal with first thing this morning. But I do still need to brush off the car, and defrost all the windows, because… Personal readiness is something to consider these days. There’s a thought for you huh? Will WWIII kick off shortly with an attempted land grab of Greenland? Who knows. Could be a dry run to annex us here in Canada. What then? Crazy times we are living in. Best get to things while you still can.

We had over a foot of snow yesterday, and today my back and arms are singing the blues. I’m fortunate that my neighbour Steve, from across the way has a snowblower, and he was kind enough to help me dig out the end of my driveway, as the plows had been by twice, and it was up over my knees with hard packed ice crystals and snow. I could have done it all myself, but I sure was glad he did the last third for me. Stand up guy that Steve. Beauty!

So we’re here on Friday. The world hasn’t ended yet. Still have lunches to make, snow to clear, garbage cans to empty, butts to wipe, dogs to walk, food to prepare. On and on. I’m too old for the draft, and would not pass the medical due to Crohn’s, and hearing loss, but you bet your ass I’d carry ammunition for guns, put out fires, and haul heavy shit to the best of my ability, to contribute. I don’t know jack about fighting, but I can do tasks so that other more important people can focus on what’s imperative. Thankfully we have our affairs in order, so that’s good to know. A load off my mind.

Leafs lost 6-5 to Vegas last night. Not a stellar performance after the Utah, and Denver losses that preceded it. Cool, cool, cool…

Hope your Friday isn’t filled with existential dread. Take care out there.

The point of this, and hopefully future paintings is not to be good, but to help me regain my “hand feel” for the brushes, and the movement of the pain on canvas. I haven’t painted for pleasure all that much since I finished art school (the first one). I have gone through two art programs, one introductory to Fine Arts, and the other for Graphic Design. I’m not naturally talented, nor do I have connections in the art/gallery world, so being a self proclaimed fine artist fell flat before I had even finished my year’s long course. But I’m good enough that it gave me a leg up against non artists in graphic design, so I’ve worked almost exclusively with a mouse since 2006. I did a handful of paintings for my kids, one or two each over the last eleven years, so I’m fairly rusty. I did two or three for the fair over the years, but also not very good. I’ve lost the touch!

So going back to it I have been very explicit with myself about the fact that I am not aiming for good art, just finished art work. Working the brush edges, relearning how to layer glazes, trying to stipple, and sweep, and swirl, and curl complex shapes. Trying to get consistent with line weights, and control over the paint itself. All of it takes time. And the results are in the time spent, not the final product that looks like ass. If after the year is out, I find I like stuff more and more, then that will likely keep me coming back, but for now, it’s about doing the paintings, not looking for admiration, or applause for the images I produce.

Nobody claps for the pages upon pages of cross hatching practice we did in class, and for homework, but the skills you developed from that made your class work better. You could tell who was building muscle memory for repeatability, and who was just getting lucky here and there. How many isometric cubes did we doodle back in school, hundred? Thousands? It felt like busy work, but being able to draw straight lines unaided is super difficult. Takes years of drills, and practice. Nobody cares for that, just the clean crisp line work on a mock-up of a product.

You can certainly enjoy the admiration that good art receives, but if you hate to practice proportions, perspective, shading, line work, weighting, balance, colour theory, and how to handle your brushes, and pencils then you don’t live being an artist, you like being liked. Which is cool. You do you. But do much of what goes into it is unseen, and not glamourous at all. Sitting on a horse, or standing at an easel keeping the muscle memory alive.

I look to Alex Maleev, and Alex Ross for inspiration, not to compare myself against. Take hints, and tips from their body of work, not cry because I can’t replicate it with any fidelity. That’s nuts. I’m pulled in many different directions, and don’t want to try to become them. I’m trying to find me. What’s my voice. What’s my style. Where do I feel comfortable. Where do I excel. Where do I feel free to expand, and explore artistically. Trying to home in on that has proven very challenging.

I look at old work, where I can tell I was having fun, and going for broke. I want to get back to small brushes, small canvas, and weird characters. I have tried for years to capture realism, and failed miserably. It’s not in the books for me. I want pop colour, pop art nonsense. Robots, killer samurai teddy bear assassin’s, blood splatter, and organic shapes. I don’t do hard edge, hard sci-fi. Not with paint anyway.

Even when I sculpt I avoid cars, guns, machinery and the like. I like fat doughy bad guys, that are muscly but indulge in eating too much. Former champs that are no longer symmetrical hulks, but chunky monkeys. I like the stretch, and lay of fats, and tissue. I like lanky haired, massive beasts. Ropey arteries and veins on necks, and biceps. Those things tell stories, and are things I can adequately capture in clay. Play to your strengths.

So while my paintings aren’t classically good, by any stretch of the imagination, I’m happy about it (them) because I’m doing the thing. I’m building that muscle memory back up. I’m allowing for that outlet to happen. It gets too easy to not work because you become unhappy with the final outcome. Let it go. If you find peace, or happiness in the doing, then don’t linger on the ending. It’s just a picture. You can paint over it in white and go again. That’s the glory of a canvas. Go again.

We’ve had about ten inches of snow here since last night. Everything is cancelled. All the things closed. Dog walk at the farm postponed. I spent an hour or two shoveling in the minus twenty six windchill, and I no longer feel like doing much of anything. It is however still snowing, I see another round or two in my immediate future. Fun times!

I drew some stuff on a canvas in the middle of last year but never got around to doing anything with it, so this last week or so I have been slowly adding colour to it, and although it’s a terrible painting, it is bringing some of the feeling back into my hands. I don’t draw or paint much, so I have lost most of the finger touch that I had for it. Use it or lose it they said, and I didn’t want to believe them, but it’s a cliche for a reason. Kernel of truth to it, and all that jazz.

Under painting, multiple coats, watered down gradients in the shadows, it’s all there. Doesn’t look good, but as a practice run to relearn the techniques it’s working out just fine. I can do one more later of shadows, two high lights, and then I will go over it all in black to pick out the details, and that should put an end to it. Will I carry on, and find something else to draw. Then paint over top of? I don’t know. I know Iiss painting. Like I miss drawing a fair bit too. But add in reading, writing, sculpting, guitar practice, singing, wood working, model kit building, war gaming terrain building and I have altogether far too many hobbies. I’m not particularly skilled at any one of those, but I like them, and enjoy them all a great deal. The spice of life!

My goblin king hasn’t had that much progress as of late, I should get him finished up as that’s a goal I have for this year. I probably need to wear my glasses for that now too, because I notice my eyes are getting weaker. Not a fan of that by any stretch of the imagination. I could texture the skin, and then start his chainmail, clothes. And armor. Maybe add a few detailed trinkets, who knows, the world is my oyster.

Hope your Wednesday is off to a good start. Going to get really cold and nasty tomorrow!

Word on the street is that later this week the temperatures are going to dip down around minus nineteen or lower with the windchill. I will definitely have to wear either snow pants or long johns when out with the dog, or waiting at the school to pick up my children. That’s an uncomfortable amount of cold, especially if it’s at all windy. That shit will cut right through you. Chill your body down to the bone. At that point that’s when fingers and toes swell, go bright red, and then burn when thawing out. Unpleasant experience. Worse if you get damp, or wet while out of doors.  So stay clear of open ice, creeks, rivers, and ponds when it gets that cold, as a plunge far from shelter could kill you.

Tuesday is here, and I can feel the sun trying to overcome the cloud cover. The occasional blue sky, and sunny day is something to celebrate when we hit this dreary, grey stretch of winter. I’ll take all the sunshine I can get at this point!

We’re just sat in the car waiting for our dog walking pals to arrive, so the dogs can run about like idiots, and tire themselves out. They do look like they’re having fun playing chase, wrestling, and racing hither and fro. My pooch is currently crooning to himself in anticipation of his lady friend getting here. He’s a little softie when it comes to Gracie-Mae.

AI keeps asking if I want it to write the rest of my post, seems weird. How do you know what I’m thinking of? How well could it emulate my random blathering? Will it have the same silly spice I like to inject into my writing? Doubtful. I’ll continue to do it myself, spelling mistakes and all thank you very much.

The Hollywood trope that dominated sci-fi movies for far too long. It wound up in just about everything for a while there. Hard to care when every single villain just wants to fire multi coloured beams into the clouds to open a portal, tear through our dimension, enact an impenetrable shield, power up a floating gizmo etc… bor-ring!

Here we are, back on our Monday Morning bullshit. Got gas, walked the dog, dropped the kids off at school, and I’m now sat down to breakfast trying to map out the rest of my mid day. I have some Non Profit duties to attend to first and foremost, then I can look for work emails, or continue on with household chores. I did the majority of the laundry over the weekend. So now it’s just towels and sheets. Fun times ahead! At least it is a pleasant smelling chore. Not like cleaning toilets, or scrubbing the bath tub, or washing down the sink. Blargh. Not nice on the nostrils. Ewwwww.

I could run the dishwasher I suppose, because we are using altogether far too many spoons as of late. We have so many but the kids go through them so fast! So many spoon eaten items. Ridiculous. You’d think we would run out of bowls, or plates first, but no. It’s the spoons that have everybody’s attention right now. Must be on a yogurt kick or something!

I was going to take some books across town to the care & share, but it’s kind of cold, and I no longer feel like it. I think I missed the window to take the snowboards there anyway. I should have gone in November, but now I’ll have to hold on to them for another year, oh well. They won’t take the helmets anyway, so no harm done as far as I’m concerned. That one bag of gear isn’t going to make or break the garage. Not when there is so much waste wood, and other trash in there taking up floor space. The over the door racks are an after thought, where I keep Halloween, and Christmas decorations. One bag of snowboards being up there too doesn’t bug me.

Best be off about my day.

Somehow yesterday completely got away from me. I slept in until nine fifteen, and then took the eldest climbing with me, because the youngest wanted to walk the dog with her mother instead. We drove out there, climbed for what felt like only an hour or so, went across the street to fetch lunch for all four of us, then drove home. Ten seconds later it’s well after three, then it’s four thirty and starting to grow dark. I didn’t really do much of anything. I didn’t read, I didn’t draw, I spent five minutes painting, and perhaps ten on my goblin King sculpture, and poof dinner time. No hours long guitar practice session, no movie watched, no resin model kit progress, a couple loads of laundry done, but nothing to show for my entire day. It was really weird. I probably scrolled on my phone, or watched YouTube for a really long time without much notice. Bad habit! Terrible habit. Wasting my days watching other people do “things”, like cleaning out and organizing their shops, or machining items, or wood working. I could just go do that myself and feel better about my entire day. Rookie move.

Youngest has gone to a play date with friends, and the other will go later this afternoon. They should be happy about that, for a few seconds anyway. Wife says she might take the little one to go see the new Spongebob movie at the theater later on today. Might have some more opportunity to purge the house if everybody is gone for a few hours. That should make me feel like I used the weekend appropriately.

I have some winter gear to take for donations, and books to be rid of too. That plus a dog walk on Monday should fill up my morning. Maybe get some gas for the car before I head to the farm. Yes, a quality Monday morning awaits. Ha!

There is a hard balance to strike between doing nothing, that feels good, and doing something that feels productive, yet doesn’t interfere with being tested, yet doesn’t make me feel as though I completely wasted forty eight hours. The urge to do nothing, versus the desire to do something are always at odds with one another. Do too much — tired. Do too little and I feel guilty for wasting so much free time. It can be exhausting just trying to fit something into the nothing, without either over doing it, or doing too much of nothing in particular. I blame my phone for that. Also, the weather. I hate winter, so I’m not outdoors keeping occupied with the yardwork, trees, or wood splitting.

I should dig out my resin model kit and start that up again. It needs sanding, priming, painting, assembly, water slide decals, and panel lining too. Lots of work to keep me busy there. I could get my goblin king sculpt finished so that I can start the sculpey version that needs to be both baked, and painted for the next Markham Fair. I have a wood working furniture project I’d like to undertake for the front hall of the house. That would let me disassemble the gigantic dog crate which dominates our front entrance. Plus I do need to clean out the gathering waste that has collected in the garage. But that can’t go until later this coming week, or early February. Patience is a virtue they say. One I have very little of.

Sunday is here! Act accordingly.

Looks more like late March, early April outside today with all of the exposed green grass, blue sky, and perks of sunshine through the grey lined clouds. Also above zero degrees Celsius, so the roads are good and clear too. The rain drained off the streets over night, so it was a pleasure to drive across Markham to get us to the gym.

The girls both got new climbing shoes of their own for Christmas so now I can just head over and climb without paying anything extra. Nice. We have not yet tried out the new larger padded harnesses I picked up for us over the holidays. We don’t climb for that long so the free for kids under twelve versions are good for now. The padding only really makes sense if we are going to go and actively climb for a few hours. The ten seconds you spend descending isn’t enough time for the belts to dig or upset you. Plus, I need a much larger bag to hold three pairs of shoes, three chalk bags, and three padded harnesses, as well as my original basic harness, and our water bottle. Without ropes, helmets, or repelling gear we still have a tonne of equipment with us. It can get unwieldy.

It’s Saturday right now. Mid day at that. Had a couple of new projects this week, which is nice. Nothing major. I have started to ask around about part time work with the Town. Nothing too serious. Just looking to fill some gaps inbetween client work. Waiting for late payers can be taxing, so if I can start to see a small, but steady stream of wages from week to week, that would ease some of my anxiety around finances. You never know I could get a huge project come my way, or has an old client reach out for something substantial and all these concerns go away again for another year. No point taking on stress about money, if things can go from empty to overrun with a handful of emails one morning. I don’t want a massive amount of obligations on my plate because when I do get busy, it can last for months at a time.

I know I get like this when I’m in the midst of a slow period. Things will pick up again, just need to hold on until then. Stay positive. Keep on keeping on.

In other news I read an additional 30 pages of a book I started last year. I’m almost halfway through the whole novel now. I still feel the same way about it. I think I want to find large print format science fiction, because my eyes are not getting any better, and going for my glasses is a hassle. Important thing is, I did some reading, and not just cleaning while doom scrolling.

Everytime I go in the garage all I can think of is how I desperately want to get rid of the waste wood from the garbage bin box, and the train table, plus some old bird houses, and tool trays I made many years ago. We have garbage in there now too because my inlaws missed our garbage pick up while we were away visiting family in Ottawa over the holidays. Not to mention the two old blue boxes that need to get picked up by the GFL folks in early February. Makes me feel unsettled that all this junk is back in the garage once again.

Oh the cycle of life!