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It doesn’t feel very good, and the effects last for several days. Zero stars, do not reccomend. Also, hold whatever your hammering a few inches lower than where you plan to strike, and most of all, I can’t stress this part enough, pay attention when you commit to a hearty swing. So lessons hard fought and won in situ. If you wanna get frisky ping yourself with a cast iron frying pan. At least then you can tell your friends you are a mage. I cast iron!

Things are in motion, and projects are coming along nicely. The door is dry fitted and I can see a path to the finish line. It’s not going to come together exactly how I had envisioned it, but it’ll work out in the end. Not just for me, but for the kids and whole family. Got a bit dusty, dirty and grimy in the process, but we’re building towards a better future at this house. So I’ll take it.

Taking an easier day today after whacking my off hand with a hammer the other day. The wrist is a tad swollen, and it aches vaguely off and on. Just glad I didn’t damage the tenons I was pounding on to get the door dry fit together. That would have upset me, no, enraged me to no end if I had done so.

Which reminds me, I really need to get my mower tuned up for the season, and start cutting the grass. Oil change, filter clean, spark plug brushed off, and new gas put in, along with a blade sharpening. Lots to do for Saturday.

Where has the time gone? Oh right, sick child, yep, that’ll do it. But a great nights sleep, nose cleared up, and no major coughing fits, and a negative cheek/tongue/throat/nose swabs says back to school with you! Plus it’s Star Wars day at school, they had new Grogu shirts that they really wanted to show off, so all for the best.

I’m hitting up my book illustrations, and doing some minor story editing, to clean up the story a bit. Next I’ll head out to the garage to work on my door. I do have to watch the time as I get jab #4 today. Right in the middle of the day. But I won’t let that stop me. Maybe. Possibly. I’ll try not to dwell on it, nor forget it entirely. Both are bad options. As for the illustrations I found some new brushes, that feel pretty good. There are 40 of them, so will definitely not use them all on this project. But good to know I have them lying around.

Still plucking away at dry fitting my door tenons. It’s slow going, but I think it will ultimately be rewarding? I hope. And not a total cock up / mess.

May the 4th be with you! And the 5th with you also.

Just what we’ve all been waiting for after two years of being sequestered apart, the new mingling is bringing back all the other bugs, one right after the other through the schools. Not a real great place to be right now. At least it’s not Covid. Thankfully. Coughing fits and vomit aside.

Birthday party season is going full tilt, so a fair chunk of my weekends will be devoted to that until the end of June, and school ends. Yay! Back to buying gifts and standing around with parents making small talk for 2 hours at a time. My favourite. Not a fan of trying to guess what gift other people’s kids will like. I know our kids are laser focused on specific items, so no clue what their friends go ape for.

24/2 kid watch day two, so no work on either my book or the wood working projects again today. No biggie. I hope that by moving slowly and trying to be methodical about it will end with a better product for both items, door & illustrated book. But in either case I can fill in the cracks and gaps to make it better once I’m 99% done with the heavy lifting. “Hide those wood working crimes”, should be the name of my next non-fiction collection of short stories.

Had intentions of working on the door and book today, but child two has taken to coughing with a runny nose – again. So all projects around the house, or in the hobby space are to be placed in hold. Great. Was just getting into both projects, and potentially starting a new sculpt, but the kids health and well being takes precedence. Perhaps it was too much outdoor strenuous activity this weekend. Masking up only does so much for the under fives with zero vaccinations for Covid. C’est la vie.

So cuddles, movies, reading and workbooks is the order of the day, along with stretches of bed rest. Propped up bed rest at that to hinder the back slide of phlegm to the lungs making them cough. Medicine to the rescue. And lots of bed rest, steam and fluids to drink.

Last night I had thought of something really funny to mention, which I did not write down, of course. And yet again, I’m left racking my brain to think of what it was. Perhaps it’ll come to me later on today when I think about other things for a while.

Oh, if anyone wants the collected short stories in pdf, you can email/comment and I’ll send you either Book One, Book Two or both. Until I get book two listed on Amazon Kindle Unlimited with the first one. Cheers!

Tis the season for outdoor Saturday morning private birthday parties in public spaces. At least it’s not the Rolling Thunder baloney in Ottawa this week(end). Could be worse. Going to venture out for some Tree Top Trekking with both kiddies. Should be a fun time for all involved. Looking forward to having to squeeze myself through the course to rescue a terrified or stuck child forty feet up in the air in a nylon netting prison. Should play out a few times over the course of two plus hours.

I don’t plan to work on my children’s book this weekend. Too frantic with the whole family home. Especially since it doesn’t have a due date, or any kind of financial backing behind it, or infront of it for that matter. A passion project, just because. Just wait until I record an instrumental guitar album, Woah Nelly! Will that suck! But it’ll be a whole lotta fun to do it though! Spend a weekend pretending to be a rock star while playing and recording just for shits & giggles. A great mini vacation from reality. Like space camp, and baseball camp is for “those” adults right. But done at home, and you can laugh at the end product.

Except without destroying a hotel room, or doing a bunch of coke. Dress like a schmuck and play various instruments loudly for two days straight. Would make a fantastic weekend. I think so.

Something short and catchy. That John Malecki guy has “Let us spray” & “Get squirrely”, and many other Youtubers and tv personalities have theirs. I need one of my own. Like “Here’s looking at you kid” or “Cowabunga!” Or maybe something a little more niche like “Nice grin shit teeth”, you know. Something universal. That everyone can get behind. I am however, at a loss for words.

I have been prepping book two to go up on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. Which involves copying it all over to a Word doc. Formatting for a smaller page size, adding a table of contents for all of the chapter headings, and making it bookmark able/ready/enabled. Something like that. I have the series cover artwork done up, to be in line with the first book. So that’s all well and good.

I have at least eight backgrounds illustrated for my childrens book. Some of which I really like, and others I will need to redo. Tried my hand a designing my lead characters, and not getting very far with that still. Oh well, not a big deal. There are far worse problems to have in life beyond not having a grasp on your two lead characters design.

It is at times like this where I feel as though I should never have stopped drawing with pen and paper. I enjoyed that so much as a kid, teen and early adult. It wasn’t until a couple of years into doing graphic design full time that I stopped. I gave up on drawing and painting too. I kept wanting my design work to feel like pen & paint, which wasn’t what I was paid to do, so I dropped it to get better with doing art with a mouse. I have stacks of canvas from paintings I’ve done over the years. So good, some bad, mostly derivative of other better artists. Had fun doing them though, which was what mattered to me. Now I kinda kick myself for letting “the touch” go. Add another daily thing to the list. Writing, exercising, and a daily doodle. Add in some guitar/piano/sculpting/wood working, and I have a pretty full day before I’ve even done any paid work! Ha. To think I’d like to do some leather working and sewing too, if I can swing it. Building model kits too. Playing with my kids is a big one. Teaching them sports and dance and music. I’m all over the place. I get that, I really do.

So here we are, on a Friday morning. The sun is shining, and we have a few days of nicer weather to look forward to. Glad to have it.

Is this the last dying breaths of winter, or is there still more to come as we crawl out of April and into May? Who knows at this point. I wish I kept better notes in years passed because I can’t recall if we’ve had such inconsistent weather in previous late April before this year. Early April is up for grabs, no contest, that’s fairly well understood, but minus six degrees with mere days to go before May? I don’t know. In university I wore shorts to my exams, and had sun burns from lounging outdoors in mid April, going back to 2002 through 2005. This feels new, and off, to me.

Gotta make a run through Ottawa at some point before June to see of my parents and one brother. They are moving back to B.C. from Ontario. Can’t stand the heat of summer here, and my brother’s allergies are awful when away from the coast. I can’t blame them for leaving, just a shame that the entirety of their stay was during Covid Times and we couldn’t get out to see each other at all. No Sens games, no Red Black games, no Athletico games, no go carting, not much of anything. We played one round of golf, on the hottest day of summer last year, but otherwise didn’t get up to any mischief at all. Boo-Urns I say, Boo-Urns.

End of the school year will be here before you know it, along with a myriad of birthdays, events and humidity and heat. I forsee a lot of bike riding, farm walks, beach time, swimming at Grandma’s pool, and possibly a day spent at Canada’s Wonderland with my eldest child, for some quality time out of school together. I can’t remember the last time I went there. It must have been just before or just after the birth of our first child. I know I went to Disney in 2004, but for the life of me I can’t remember going to Wonderland. Weird.

So What’s the plan for today? I did some illustration work for an Ottawa Rugby Team, but I won’t hear back about that for 48 hours or so. Should I bite the bullet and just set up my childrens book in illustrator, and tear through it all as fast as I can manage? Perhaps I will.