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Trying to figure out what (if anything) I have forgotten for our four day trip out west. Good thing is we’ll still be in Canada so I can run to a store to grab any item(s) I might have missed. I am not packing swim towels because I know the hotel will have some. Plus I’d like to save room, as we are traveling light, with only carry on bags with us. I believe 8 have enough socks, undies, t-shirts, pants, and sweaters for us to be comfortable.bling pants, and capris for climbing. I’d love to bring my gear; shoes, harness, chalk bags and such, but it doesn’t fit in with our “traveling light” aesthetic. Feel me? I will just rent us some shoes and such when we go. The lack of chalk might be a hindrance, but I’m sure they’ll sell that too, at an upcharge no less.

I binge watched all of Andor season two this week. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I feel like I could go watch Rogue One, and then a New Hope without much hesitation. It’s amazing what a good bit of media can do to ignite a rewatch of the back catalogue. Shame that the Rise of Skywalker back pedaled so hard and wasted two films in the process. I never finished the Obi Wan show, and have no interest in Acolyte. I’m hard pressed to care about season three of The Mandalorian, and I really liked its first two seasons. Didn’t mind The Book of Boba Fett either. Hit a bit of a saturation point with all that stuff. But Andor was something different. I liked that.

Here we are on Thursday all ready! Wow how the week is flying by. Tonight we go see the sixth, and final showing of my daughter’s Newsies production. It’s a musical, with dancing, sets, costumes, a live three piece band, mic’ed up actors, and a real theater. I’m excited. Seems a bit much for kids mostly in grade five, but I’ll roll with it. I thoroughly enjoyed musical theater as a kid, teen, and young adult. I did stage plays all the way into university. It’s great fun. I wasn’t very good, but I gave it everything I got! Can’t sing a lick, but I tried! Oh how I tried. I am very happy that she is enjoying herself, and exploring things artistically on her own. I am no stage dad. I live vicariously through no one!

Soon, in like another two weeks we will have my youngest daughter’s dance recital, and a full blown taekwondo tournament with both sparring at full force, and patterns. It should be a blast! Plus we have prom, three birthdays (at least) and all of the end of term shenanigans at the school. Spirit days, outdoor play days, field trips, and more sun than you could shake a stick at. My wife’s schedule will go into meltdown mode for the next four weeks, and then comes Canada Day and a sense of calm. July is pretty quiet. Friends all disappear to cottage country, vacation days, international vacations and what not. I hope to bust out my long board, roller blades, and bicycle to get some much needed exercise. Come end of June my climbing will pause for the summer, and I’ll need to swim and be active more regularly to compensate. Don’t want to get fatter over the summer. Hard enough to limit weight gain over the winter months, I don’t need to pack on the LBS during summer time too.

I’m just rambling now. We have an essence of a plan for the weekend. Lunch is ordered for tomorrow to celebrate Mother’s Day slash Father’s Day. Climbing on Saturday, and a beach dog walk, followed by group dinner on Saturday evening. A brunch on Sunday maybe, and Monday is open because we have to be out of the hotel by 11:00 am, but our flight isn’t until 7:00 pm. Lots of things to find to do to fill Monday. Fingers and toes crossed it all goes well.

My wife’s grandmother, whom is in an assisted living facility, and recently passed her 97th birthday has become unresponsive, not asleep but out cold. She has a DNR, so is currently being watched by staff at the facility but is not being treated with anything beyond fluids (as per usual, she hasn’t been able to chew solid foods in at least two years now) via IV, and potentially any pain meds they might think will keep her peaceful. Not great timing, I mean it is never a good time to die, but my eldest daughter starts her six show run today of their stage play Newsies, and then the cast party, and our trip out west for my side of the family reunion. I don’t want to lie to our kids should she pass, but I also don’t want them inconsolable and unable to finish the stage show, or our trip. She is not dead, as of right now, so it could be a moot point, so I’ll not worry about it, as much as I am able to. But of a worrier. No need taking on more as she has had dips before, and emerged no worse for wear on the other side of things. The lady can take a fair bit, she had a pet bear as a child up in the Sault you know! Grit. Hard wearing woman.

I am now charged with packing their gear, doing laundry, and double/triple checking we have enough stuff. It really is a short trip, two of the four days will be consumed by cross country travel, so it shouldn’t be too crazy. I took them to Florida myself only a few months back, so I’ve done this before. They are also no longer tiny babies, so much easier to travel with no car seats, strollers, baby bags, diapers, and wipes at this stage. Tablets and their back packs, and away we go! Fingers crossed.

I think today is Wednesday. These short holiday weeks are always a toss up on whether or not I know where I am in the week, on any given day. Had to drop off my eldest at the theater across town earlier than usual, and then get back to take my youngest to class at the school. Still walked the dog. If I recall, I get my youngest from school at regular time, then take her to tutoring, and then grab my eldest from the theater later on. By then her first three full shows will be done. Half way to the cast party at that point.

Tomorrow her day is broken up into two parts. An early morning at the theater, and then an evening final showing which I will actually get to be in attendance of. Pumped! Looking forward to it. They have been hard at work on this production since September. I think my daughter will be very happy once it is all over though. She will get her lunches, and snack recess time back to go outside, and play with friends instead of rehearsing all the time. It’s been a long, long time to stay laser focused on this project. Especially for grade schoolers, they aren’t even high school, or junior high aged kids.

I’ll have to buy her some flowers tomorrow. Anyway, happy Wednesday. Ciao Bella!

It’s frost warning after frost warning as of late. Feels like 4°C, and it’s under ten degrees the whole day, for days on end. This is some messed up shit right here. Fourteen degrees and sunny in January, and four degrees with bitterly cold breezes in the end of May, ridiculous. Nonsense. Hate it. Not that I’m looking for it to jump immediately into the mud thirties with one hundred percent humidity. But a few weeks of spring like temperatures would be appreciated. Cold to hot is not spring. I want five weeks of mid teens, sun shine, blue skies and an occasional shower to keep the grass, trees, and flowers alive. Not this fresh off the March Break balogney.

In other news the weeks of Newsies performances are finally here! All day tech, dress, lighting rehearsals today, followed by two full days with six individual shows! My oldest is going to be absolutely fried when she finishes both days. That’s a tonne of hard work she has put in. A brief cast party on Thursday evening, and then we are off to see family over the weekend. Poor thing, won’t get a chance to bask in any potential glory from being in the show.

I do need to remember to grab her from town later today at an odd time. I’ll mark it on the white board so I won’t forget. I will go do that now.

Took the oldest to Wonderland and all if feels like we have done is stand in line up, after long line up. It is exhausting. At least we’ve had the chance to eat, and drink, and use the washrooms. Weather is ok, but on the cool side for my tastes, but can’t win them all.

Checked another item off my list of chores, whoop dee do. The winter tires are off, washed, and now put back in dry storage for another five to six months. Great. I had to wait a few days because changing the tires made my back ache, and my right bicep hurt (more than I would expect). So I gave it a day to let those aches and pains subside. Then it rained, then we had track & field, then work got busy, and then we were working at the farm prepping fields with the kids. Gathering buckets of stone & rocks, plus picking up bits of metal, and pottery shards. Find all sorts of weird shit out in those fields. So now that all of this has come, and gone, I finally was in a good enough spot to take the tires away, walk the dog with the kids, and go fetch breakfast for us all since the kids only ate one slice of toast each this morning, and had room for a hot brunch meal three hours later. All good.

I have the recycling ready to go out, and our last child safety car seat is set to go in the trash. Animal in the garage has ruined it, even though I put it up in the rafters in a bag when we were done with it. Either mice, or the chipmunks have chewed it looking for nesting material. Bastards. Oh well. Off to a landfill instead of a second home.

I had high hopes of weeding our front garden bed this weekend but the weather is hardly cooperating. I like that the soil is soft and pliable but I could do without the misting drizzle, and threats of all out rain. Plus there is a lot to do, and I’m not totally feeling it right this second. I am indulging in a Lazy Sunday truth be told. There is going to be another late night Leafs Game, so that will eat up about 3 hours of this evening, and could potentially be emotionally charged. Let us hope for a game seven win. I am cautiously optimistic.

I really did a number on the tendons of my left hand on an early climb yesterday. My whole hand is lagging behind mental commands. Rather odd. I tried to play my guitar yesterday and that was a disaster. Numb, or semi functional fingers don’t make terribly good music. Had to put Voltaren to work on my forearm over night. The hand feels better today, just not one hundred percent. The body gets used to climbing twice a week, and it gets grumpy when you try to do the same things with only half of the skills maintenance, after skipping a session, and being lackadaisical about my grip strength training regimen. Bit myself in the butt. Oopsie daisy.

We have another busy week ahead of us even with tomorrow being a national holiday. My eldest daughter has six shows of Newsies to perform on Wed/Thurs, a full day of rehearsals on Tuesday, a cast party Thursday Night, and we fly at 6:15 am Friday to go visit family out west. Plus my youngest needs to build a turtle egg cage for Girl Guides on Tuesday, which means I need to pick up a bunch of stuff, and cut & prep it for construction suitable by fifteen eight year olds. There is a rumor that this particular build might get put on hold until September so that they can build more than one, and get the town to do a full presentation to the kids on why they are building them. Fingers crossed it can wait.

Had some good, challenging climbs today. I really regret missing Tuesday night because I thought the Leafs were playing. Going a whole week in between sessions can really diminish both my grip, and my overall arm/leg strength & coordination. I tried a 5.9 early on and near the top my left hand stopped responding, and my tensed fingers would not release their grip on a tight finger hold (tight as in; very narrow ledge, not a gap I was stuck in). After several heart beats and me turning to look directly at my left hand did it finally release and I was able to complete my climb. But after that early hiccup my hand wasn’t really right afterward. I failed a different 5.9 route that I have done five or six times over the last several weeks. My forearms were shot, and my left hand uncooperative. Otherwise the three of us had a gay ole time.

My oldest had her ninety minute lesson with coaching staff, and my youngest & I climbed together. Or I clipped her in, and then found a route nearby where I could get some work in, and be up, and down in time to move her on to another. I get very sweaty that way. Racing to beat her up, and down, and in & out of the clips. I do twice as many because she is so little, she is not allowed to clip in or out of any auto belay system. My tired hands get an even harder beating than usual when I climb with my kids in tow.

I’m still glad we all enjoy it though. It’s a fun little pass time for us, and it keeps me active, and off my phone, and in the moment. That is good for my kids too. They have to concentrate, and be aware, and focus on what is going on immediately around them. Plus it isn’t too far away. I’d be happier if we had one closer by, but a twenty minute drive isn’t the worst thing ever.

Looks kinda stormy outside right now. Was getting ugly on the drive home from deep inside Markham. Winds, dark low lying clouds, and a fair bit of rain. I didn’t see any lightning or hear any thunder claps. All good!

I am very glad I decided to cut the grass yesterday afternoon as last night’s rain, and today’s humidity would have made that chore particularly challenging. Not to mention how much longer it would take with a mower that bogs down under a damp, or wet grass load. It would have been aggravating to say the least. Looks like now I’ll be under a bit of pressure to cut the grass twice a week while we are in the thick of the growing season. Lots of sun, a few good dumplings of rain, and a whole lot of time equals extra work outdoors for the next several weeks.

Woke up this morning to do laundry and discovered 8 needed to empty the basement dehumidifier for the first time this season. Then noticed the water softener needed to run it’s quarterly cleaning cycle, luckily I have the appropriate detergent on hand for such a thing. I got one load of laundry out of the dryer, and a new one into the wash. Walked the dog at a wet and humid farm, and now I need to eat while I wait on some responses from work emails. Could be a busy day. It is another long weekend with Victoria Day. So that means town fireworks tonight. Score. Maybe some food trucks & icecream might be in our near future.

I have been approached to create some multimedia pieces for my daughter’s school showing of Newsies. Just waiting on a response, and some assets to work off of. It’s not typically something I do, but I’m willing to give it a whirl to help out if I can.

I felt bad for not volunteering at the track meet, but given the rain delay date was when I am away I figured it would be better to not add any additional complexity to the organisers lives. Plus it allowed me to watch freely, and come & go as I pleased to do other things throughout the day. I taped all four of my daughter’s races so that my wife could watch them and see how well our eldest daughter did. I was very proud of the effort she put forth. The wins were nice too, but I could tell she was giving it her all, and that’s what counts on and off the track. Giv’er!

You know what that means! Sun burns and dehydration. Looks to be a nice day today, not too hot, not too cold. Let us hope they all have a good day. Have fun, cheer each other on

**UPDATE: We have some early results from the women’s races this morning. My daughter placed first in the 200 m finals, and 2nd overall in the 100 m sprint finals. A very happy, and exhausted girl!

Later on today she will try her best at standing long jump, running long jump, and what I would call shot put, but they have reclassified as “ball throw” due to previous injuries having small kids use an actual shot put.

I had to run home to check on the puppy, and to eat/drink myself. It’s been a lovely day, warm but not hot, and overcast so there wasn’t altogether too much sun. It appears to be warming up, and getting brighter out. I’ll bring a fresh cold drink to my daughter when I go back in two hours time. She is pleased as punch. I got it all in video too! Nice.

Only a day or so ago the Lilacs looked miles away from flowering, and today BAM! Purple flowers at the ready. In another day or two those should be fully formed, and very aromatic. I wonder if that means we will get some Jasmine and Russian Olive scents in the coming weeks too. The Russian Olive is a horrific barbed, spiked nuisance of a tree, but by the gods do they ever smell good, at least to me. When I spent my summers cutting grass in Brampton, and Mississauga, you’d find them everywhere, and they’d stick you really badly in the eyes, face, shoulder, neck, whatever you failed to secure when around them, but it smells so good. Kinda sick. Ha.

Unfortunately the Lilacs at our house never last long enough for my wife or youngest daughter to enjoy them on their birthdays. They come, and go so fast on our property. Other places we see them for weeks after ours have dried, and crumpled to dust. Maybe the other houses have irrigation and a regular watering schedule? I don’t know. Besides cutting the grass, and watering the Dahlias we plant every spring I don’t much bother with our lawn or vegetation. I’m not altogether bothered by weeds in the grass, and I don’t see the point in dependent trees or shrubs that have to be watered, but can’t survive on their own. I’m not opposed to watering once or twice over the course of the whole summer. I don’t want to see the trees suffer when it gets really dry in late July, and into August. A good drink from the hose isn’t unwarranted during that time, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to water every single item multiple times a week whether we have rain or we don’t. That’s ludicrous.

The apple trees, and the Cherry tree all look lovely right now too, with their fresh blooms blowing around in the breeze. I don’t get any sort of scent off of those, but they certainly do look great. Of course the puppy chewed all of my raspberry stalks so who knows if we will even get any berries this year. Fucking mutt chewed through half of my grape vine too. Little shit head. I had to pull meters and meters of severed, newly budding vine out of the fence line because he has nibbled through the main vine body. That’s cost me about twelve kilograms worth of grapes if not more. I’d wager he has stomped all of my strawberries to death too. Cute puppy, but he is a menace to our backyard. Chewed trees, vines, hedges, and he walks all over the berry patches, and digs huge holes against the side of the house. Dick head.

It’s warm out so my neighbour is once again going to spend ever waking moment he isn’t fire fighting, running a tile saw, or cutting bricks, or manning a jack hammer, concrete drill, or planing table tops from sun up to sun down. It’s awesome. Can’t enjoy the breezes without deafening noise too. Brick dust coats just about everything in a 25 m radius. Can’t wait for them to finish remodeling so I don’t have to hear this shit any more.

Sounds like I’m in a sour mood. I’m not. Not really. Just sounding off on some current challenges we’ve come up against with the dog, kids, mother nature etc… I’m generally quite pleasant, I think. Ha.

Put my garage to good use yesterday, and Sunday by opting to swap out my own sets of winter/summer tires. My wife’s GMC is by far the easier of the two vehicles to switch tires on. I have them all labelled so I know where I got them from, and where to rotate them to. Her tires are unidirectional so I have to follow the arrows in order to obtain all of the benefits from their design. The new vans tires are omnidirectional, and had no labels from the dealership, so I put them where I felt like it. No arrows, triangles, or wear patterns present to denote an orientation specific to best performance. I looked it up.

The nice thing about my wife’s car is that it has a long rail from wheel well to wheel well where 8 can place my jack. The new van only has four six inch wide spots available to put your jack. The rail is deep, and angled too. I had to switch over to my bottle jack, as my floor jack is too wide at the lift point, and the 2×4, or 2×4 I use to distribute the weight over a broader area isn’t deep enough to touch the interior of the rail and contact the jack, which deforms the body panels. But my bottle jack works just fine for that vehicle. It’s just annoying to have to switch between the two types of jack. I’d love to see how a shop would lift this type of vehicle with such a limited lift area to use. Must have a small/tall adapter of some sort. Like a hockey puck stack or urethane block to go up into the space. Seems needlessly limiting in my opinion.

The locking lug nut wasn’t too bad to work with. Seems our new van lugs are the same size as the old van, so I didn’t need to bring all my sockets out to test them to find the correct size. That was a relief at least. Which means I knew I had the correct size for both my breaker bar, torque wrench, and impact wrench sockets. Nice!

But I did do a number on my shoulder and my back, to one side anyway. Voltaren to the rescue. I took the time to power wash all of the tires, the new summer ones, and the winter ones as well. I’m just going to wait another day or two before I move them to let my back rest a bit. Tires on rims get heavy. For a lump of a man like myself, whom isn’t used to slinging weights like that around, I get pretty sore afterwards. Lifting tires with one arm to locate a stud and swing the tires into place required an awful lot of bending, twisting, and patience in yesterday’s early afternoon sun. I was sweating like a pig. I had thought about using my crowbar to help me lift the tire into place but I would get very angry if I poked a hole in brand new, never used summer tires trying to wrangle the damn things into the van.

No matter, I managed to get them all on, and torqued down to the correct spec’s per vehicle. 140 ft lbs for the GMC, and a mere 104 ft lbs for the van. Weirdly specific I think. But I’m no engineer.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be less achy and I can run the tires down to  storage for the summer months. I will see them again in late October or early November, weather depending.