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We are all still alive and well. Three down, six to go. This minor heat wave is making outdoor time a bit stressful. Not do much fun playing the farmer wannabe when the temperature goes way up. Had dome minor rain last night here, along with thunder & lightning. Not much though, as it didn’t last long. Ground was very dry when I woke up, so that’s not an ideal sign of much precipitation.

The TelMax people have begun to drill in order to run fiber optic cable in our whole town, so those Vermeer drilling rigs are all over the place along with huge reels of orange and blue fiber optic lines. The vacuum trucks are y far the loudest aspect of the operation so far. According to the spray paint, flags and guide holes, we should end up with four new holes on the front lawn, to match all of the streets water shut offs, and gas main shut offs, road signs and lamp posts that we all ready have. Marginally less grass to mow I guess. I flagged down our homes water shut off, so I hope they don’t hit that either.

I am mostly done with report #2 of (6) six, for this busy season, which ends in late September, possibly spilling into early October. Good to get the work in, and done before the weekend comes. I like to swim and hang out with my kids guilt free on weekends. God damn why can’t we get passed Covid, so many things I’d like to take my kids to, and to go experience together. Theme Parks, indoor go cart rides, movies, bowling, indoor rock climbing, a mall for an air conditioned stroll. Gah! So dull with those things stricken from the list of potential day trips and fun family time. Not that with this heat we’d ever turn down a swim, or a splash through the creek at the farm looking for fish, toads, minnows or crayfish. That’s always an adventure!

It was a busy week to ten days or so, four sell sheets, various print ads, one big report, five can labels (355ml & 473ml), icon illustrations and logo creation, and some compositing, as well as a 3D rendering for an updated product package. A solid ten days of heightened workload, followed by?… who knows what. Maybe some retail signage? New business development from another micro brewery? Packaging projects? Definitely more reports, that much I know for certain. Joy’s of freelancing I’m sure.

You all know well enough that if I had of cancelled plans for yesterday evening, the clouds would have immediately parted and the sun shown through. But as it was it stayed blustery and tried to dribble on the walk down, but nothing much came of it. That was until around 9:45pm when it was time to walk home after a round of adult beverages (I’m a light weight, so no driving). And within a handful of steps the rains began to fall. It was more of a mild annoyance. The rain felt fine in the dark, but looked way worse in the light of the street lamps, or the cone of a head light. Then it looked pretty awful. My main concern was the flashing of lightning in the sky. But no rumbles, so I was confident it was all fairly far away. It rumble a good crack once or twice when I was within five hundred meters of home, so all together not awful. Could have been a whole lot worse. It wasn’t a completed downpour, and the lightning was far away. I could have called for a ride, but it wasn’t that bad. Plus it had been so hot and humid that the coolness of the rain on my shoulders was welcomed.

Now did any of it hit the farm? Given that it lasted roughly twenty minutes and was by my estimation blowing north east, I think it passed over the up and coming vegetable crops. So back we’ll go for our turn at watering. Nothing screams fun! Like lugging dirty hoses around the gardens.

Should I have been surprised to see so many restaurants in town that were packed to the gills last night? I visited a covered patio with a high ceiling, open all four sides, with only a few scattered guests. So I think I’m ok. I had my N95 on me, and kept my distance, but who knows if that’s enough with BA.5 at this point.

Ends in one of several ways. You’re either really rested and ready to get up and go (unlikely!) Or you feel groggy and then get the best six minutes of sleep you’ve ever had in your life (yeah baby!) Or it’s some kind of emergency and you get up in a panic, feel both awake and exhausted and then crumple into a heap once the shock of being awoken early has worn off.

We are heading off to harvest garlic under a stark and uncaring sun, in the sizzling morning heat. With any luck the rain we had recently will mean we don’t have to fight every single garlic clove coming up out of the ground. Given how sweaty and grumpy the first crew was about it yesterday evening, I think it’s going to be a bit of a slog to get through. Just a thought anyway. I give my kids about 30-45 seconds of work before they desire a swim, or just up and leave the garden we’ll be working in. This is when a big portable 10x10ft tent would come in handy. You could work under it out of the sun. The heat will still suck, but the full force of the baking sun would not be scorching my back the whole time. Things you realize far too late in the year!

So, the other day I milled up a couple of old reclaimed boards, and now I need to decide what to build with it all. It’s not much, so a book case or cabinet are out. I have enough for a box, or open vessel of some sort. Unless I tackle more of the reclaimed wood pile. I need to leave some in a rustic state to make a sign for my wife’s side of the family. Something that will go to their cottage at some point. Our living room desperately needs storage space. Like a big wall unit of asymmetrical shape, to fit the odd space, but gives us shelves, and drawers in which to place… stuff. Kids stuff mainly. Not that the 3ft x 2ft toy box I built helped all that much. You have to put your stuff BACK into the toy box for it to be a long term solution.

So take care, and stay safe while the heat and humidity play out over the next two days. Stay in the shade. Sit in your tub submerged in cool water. Turn on your AC if you have it. Go walk around a mall with AC if you don’t have it at home. Drink lots of water. Try not to over exert yourself in the open sunshine. Plop yourself infront of a fan. Hit up a public pool or splash pad if available in your area.

It is Tuesday, and July is nearly 3/4 done. Crazy how time flies when there is no escape from anyone.

Go stand in line at a Service Ontario office for two hours to renew your plates, and exchange those plates for new ones where the numbers and letters have not come off the metal. Surrounded by hot sweaty people in a humid office building hallway. Some masked (yeah!) And some not (boo!).

Watching crowds of people wander in off the street, take one look at the lineup outside of the office and then reverse course. There were, what I thought, nine people ahead of me, not great, but not awful. That was until I saw into the actual room itself to see fifteen or so clumps of people waiting patiently for their turn at the counter. Intermingled with countless car dealership folks floating in and out in a near constant stream. Blargh. Not a fun Monday afternoon treat. But altogether not that bad. Seventy five minutes of standing and waiting, followed by a very quick ten minutes of action, and then going about putting the plates back on and getting my paperwork sorted into the appropriate spot. Near painless. But one vehicle is done until 2024, so go team!

What a day to end week two of the summer holidays. Hot and sunny by 9:00am. If these past two weeks are any indication, we aren’t even going to know the days date, or which way is up or down by the time summer is halfway through. These kids are – a lot. My wife remarked that at least when she taught summer school she actively knew what day of the week it was. But now we’re all adrift in the new possibilities and utter sameness of every day. The biggest demarcation of the days is going to be the weather. Windy? Cloudy? Raining? Or a vast string of hot sunny days that run together into one massive lump.

I am fairly certain that next year both kids will do several weeks of camp in July at least. They need the structure and the chance to see other kids their age. I get that Covid is here, and it sucks. So we have stayed isolated a fair deal. But when we do happen across friends of theirs they are so happy. Summer is a difficult season to navigate as we all have such different schedules and preferences for off time. Can be a real challenge to nail down a day to visit and keep all parties invested in keeping that date. Or maybe that’s just me?

Our kids are like chalk and cheese. One second they can’t bear to be apart, and the next instant are kick boxing and scratching at each others eyes, then back again, on a constant loop all day long. Tired, hungry, happy it doesn’t seem to make a difference. We work them in the sun at the farm, swim them, ride bikes & scooters, lounge with movies and bake and attempt to clean. But still, split second shifts between besties and enemies. We don’t seem to be able to find that fine line between just exercised enough to be docile, and over tired tyrant that needs to pee ten times instead of going to bed and falling asleep at a reasonable hour.

I was going to go into a bit about boiling, roiling guts that wake you up at 3:40am in a panic, but that picture paints itself fairly vividly without much prompting. So consider yourselves lucky.

Just finished the book Children of time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. What a strange but entertaining novel. I was entertained enough that I purchased the follow up and am now three chapters deep. I haven’t found a new author that I like in a while. I’m not on the fence so much, as not entirely sold yet. It may sound snobbish, but I like to read two halfway decent books by the same author in the same series before I add them to my roster of followed authors. Because it can take some of them a year, or three, or even more to put out a new book, it’s good to follow several authors so that you can read new stuff, or at least new to you stuff, fairly often. I hate when I get all caught up on new book purchases and then have to wait months for a new release. Oh! What a problem to have, I know, I know.

Once I get through the second book: Children of ruin, I plan to read The Grapes of Wrath. Which is an American classic, so not new, but is new to me as I never read it. We did Margaret Atwood and Sir Oliver Mowat, and George Orwell among others, in Canada. Even Of Mice and Men if I recall correctly. I read a bunch of ancient classics in grade twelve english, and OAC English lit. I kind of want to read Moby Dick too. But we’ll have to see about that. I want to read Crime and Punishment, but I fear that the length, and depressive material may not suit me much. Who knows, maybe it’s the classic lit I’ve been waiting for. I’m far more interested in slotting in older classics inbetween the science fiction and fantasy novels that I usually read, the older I get. Not for a fear of having missed out, but those are considered classics for a reason, must be something to them for their continued longevity.

Except in the case of deadlines for paid work, I can’t tell a Tuesday morning from a Friday morning. Oh, turns out, today is Friday. Thought it was Thursday. Kids are mental, as per usual. So no surprises there. Have some events coming up in the next week or so, and I strive to get more paid projects completed, so that I can start new ones in a fresh state of mind, and not with lingering change orders hanging over my head. Hard to be creative if you need to go back to old work to make a stream of client requested minor tweaks.

Our niece will be coming by for a visit soon, so it’ll be mayhem here for an hour or two. They all play well together as they are equally spaced in age. Which is nice, for a change.

Have been sleeping terribly these last two weeks, not sure why. Possibly the stress/tension of everybody being home 24/7 and never having any personal space from one another. A lot of panic driven dreams. Yikes. Probably adds to why time is feeling disjointed and out of sorts.

I seem to miss somewhere on my neck that I find later on in the day, when it is most inconvenient to do so. It’s not like I shave in the dark, or quickly for that matter. And it never seems to be the same place twice. I am absolutely baffled by this persistent experience of hysterical blindness when examining my skin for hair follicles. Doesn’t seem to matter if I use a straight razor, or electric, wet, dry, doesn’t matter. I always seem to miss something, and it irritates me to no end. I’ll have to resort to putting a pen lined grid on my face & neck to make sure I clear every block before moving on. I also need to rinse in between because a blocked razor might pass over the hair and not cut it, which I think is the culprit here. But I could very well be wrong about that. I’d have to tape myself shaving and look to see what I’ve done wrong, and find out how I always seem to miss a different patch on my person each time.

In other news, it’s a beautiful day here in southern Ontario. Had some rain the other day, which was welcome. Farm instruments say we got about an inch of rain. Which is good for this week, but does little to alleviate the lack of rain last week, and what about next week? Need an inch or so every four to five days for things to be optimal. Or so I’m told.

The youngest has asked me to draw the new extended family pet on a piece of cardboard from memory. A full front view at that, with all limbs showing! Yikes. I’m a tad rusty but I gave it a go. Not my best work, but it looks like a rabbit, so I’ll take that win today.

On a high note, a fair few projects for the ole day job came in this week. That’s always a plus these days. Some 3D rendering work, more can labels, a sixteen page brochure edit, and a new illustrated icon, plus the long form event report that I started last week. Not too shabby. Invoices out, means money coming in!

Otherwise it has been a slow week, seeing as how I’m working more than usual (summer rush and all). I’m happy to see events going on, even though I wouldn’t be in attendance during this period in time. Given what I’m hearing from Nurse friends and reading in the news BA 5 is as transmissible as measles, which is insane. So I think more outdoor distanced fun is in store. Really having to think hard about going indoors anywhere but home and the cottage. I think we had all hoped to have this SarsCov2 thing behind us after three years, but it’s here to stay for the mean time. Blargh! Talk about a downer on the mood!

The kids had a bon fire with their grandpa the other night, and we counted thirty nine bug bites on the legs of our oldest, and another seventeen on the legs of the youngest. Both had full length pants on, like those Roots onsie deals, and were eaten for lunch by mosquitoes. It’s horrific to look at. Makes me itch just thinking about it. And my skin crawl just a bit too. Yuck. Ah! Now my head and neck itches.