Day: March 18, 2026

Hard some plumbing done which required a fair bit of soldering in a confined hallway equidistant from both of our hard wired smoke, and carbon monoxide detectors setting them off. So the plumber dutifully pulled them from the ceilings. I then fought with these two plastic bastards for a full 90 minutes while they chirped, beeped, spoke in french to me, and pulled themselves out of their brackets, and unhooked themselves from their wire nuts on more than one occasion. I shredded one thumb, and one pointer finger wrestling with those assholes. After a good fight, and very sore shoulders, and some loud expletives I think I have them installed correctly, with green LEDs showing, battery no longer asking for activation, and no other (for the moment) issues.

Not only that but the tub is now usable once again in the main floor bathroom, and the wall behind the shower is patched. I have it filled in. Needs to dry, and get repatched. Then sanded, and painted over. Good as new. We just so happen to hang a sizeable photo collage there, so nobody should be much wiser to the edit! Ha. Perfect.

I for one celebrated with a shower, and pray to the skies above that I will get a restful night’s sleep. Sad we didn’t get to do any maple syruping this March break, but the weather chose to be uncooperative for such an endeavour. We needed warm sunny days, followed by cold nights. What we got was heavy snow, and bitterly cold, blustery days instead. So — no dice. The kids did go out on the snowmobile with their grandpa a couple times, and did a fair few hours of tobogganing with all the fresh snow. They had fun. I worked a bunch, so it was all good in the end. I even took a turn in the hot tub watching all the kids at once. That was a very loud test of my patience. I prefer to relax in the tub, not get splashed and shrieked at for an hour. The things we do to occupy our littles.

My second Dungeon Crawler Carl book has arrived, so I intend to dig into that tonight, if I can lift my arms to turn the pages at all. Happy March break everybody!

Something about this year’s time change has kicked off a round of poor sleep in our household. We are all waking up tired, groggy and feeling untested. I know the kids don’t feel tired at night time, but are really dragging ass in the mornings. I feel it too. No amount of naps or sleeping in seems to rectify the defect we are experiencing. I know we feel a bit funny with each alteration of the clock, but this seems harder for some reason. More doom & gloom on the news, worsening economy, doubts of a long or fulfilling future. More stress? I don’t know what it is but it’s getting to all four of us in a somewhat equal measure. Fun times at our house, swing on by!

I spent some time swinging an axe yesterday to split wood, and boy was it cold out yesterday, holy cow! I did split 90% of what was asked of me before I was told to stop. A little pile of logs can make a pretty sizeable stack of split wood in a short period of time. At least when the wood comes apart with each swing, and it doesn’t require ten plus swings just to open a crack, or make one piece into two, each time. I can still only go for 60 to 90 minutes at one time, so it wasn’t an all day thing. The cold would have gotten me to go inside after a short while longer anyway. The wind was biting. Long johns can only do so much, you know?

So now my shoulders, and back are feeling the exercise strain from yesterday afternoon. Not a problem. While I do have my day job to contend with, the kids are keeping themselves occupied for the most part this March Break. Unfortunately the weather has not cooperated for doing Maple Syrup, but there’s always next year. They have utilized the snow for tobogganing, and trail rides on a snowmobile. Skating has been offered up once or twice. Snow shoveling could keep them busy a few days in a row these days too! Ha. Damn snow.

March is dwindling fast because of the break week, so it’ll be April and raining all the time before we know it. I’ll have to go out for Easter supplies before too much longer. I already need to go and get a birthday present, and some hockey gloves for my eldest child, for a party she is attending over the weekend. Skates, stick, and a helmet we have, but no finger protection from slashing sticks. Trying to find old pairs that haven’t seized up entirely and started to crumble is proving more difficult than anticipated. Might just have to buy some, if we can find any for a reasonable price. That’s the name of the game for the foreseeable future, a reasonable price. Or work around, or doing without. Belt tightening. You know the game. Join the fun.