…and now I’m up, heart pounding with adrenaline due to a blaring, blinking, squawking false alarm that woke us from a dead sleep. The dog’s upset, the kids are wired awake also, and I just can not seem to fall back to sleep & I am still physically exhausted from stacking wood yesterday, among other things. Not the auspicious start to the holiday Monday that I was looking for.
I was hoping for a late start to my morning, with a suitable lie in, to awaken feeling both rested, and excited to finish up a bunch of chores before we sit down to eat a giant meal and watch some more Blue Jays baseball. Not that last night’s 3-1 loss to the Mariners wasn’t frustrating to watch, but I’m looking for them to do more with their offense tonight. Shake off the loss, and come back with a vengeance!
It is Monday after all, and you just knew that Monday was going to Monday all over the holiday long weekend. Once my heart stops pounding I’m hoping I can fall back to sleep while it is still somewhat dark out. Fingers crossed for more zzzzz’s.
Not as much fun as chopping firewood and tossing the bits onto an ever growing pile, but with the need for bins to show up before I can split more, I have to stack a bunch now. At least it looks to be sort of sunny out today. Yesterday’s rain has passed over top finally. Should make for an easy morning at least.
If I am correct today is Sunday of the long weekend. The kids went hunting for pumpkins in the patch with some cousins yesterday morning before climbing. We only just arrived in time for their lessons because of it. My kids aren’t very punctual, which bothers me to no end. It’s disrespectful of other people’s time, and efforts. I don’t much care for that. But I digress.
Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to all of the fellow Canadians out there. Enjoy your long weekend. Go close down your cottages, and move those docks if you didn’t all ready do so on Labour Day weekend. Partially cloudy, but mostly dry, so have at it! Elbows up! All eyes turn to Halloween after this, so get spooky people.
**EDITOR’S NOTE: Stacked two and a bit rows in the wood shed, and freed up five green wire bins for more split wood, so now I don’t actually have to stop if I don’t want to. Yahoo! I can fill three wire bins with what I’ve got split already, which is awesome, and then I can direct load into the bins as I go removing a second step of loading out the piles later. I’ll have to see which work flow moves better, spending a week making a pile, then using one hour on a Friday, or the following Monday to load up the bins, or chucking my splits directly into the nearest bin as I go. I think it will depend mightily upon the wood itself. Stuff that falls apart at a look can produce a much greater pile over a shorter period, and may take more effort to toss where needed. We will have to see. My hands are getting weary from handling the piles so much, but climbing, and axe swinging means my forearms won’t be solid unusable bricks tomorrow. And that’s a good thing!
This cold is fairly mild thus far, but I do hate being sick. I just don’t feel right. Not a fan. Do not recommend it to anyone, anywhere, anytime. I do not know if my outdoor exercise routine with the axe has helped me out at all, but I’ve still been able to split wood while not feeling 100% soni have that going for me. Our holiday weekend plans are all a jumble right now. We were going, we aren’t, it’s raining so it’s back on, but the rest of the weekend is dry so the farming is to continue… I don’t know what is going on. I do have climbing coming up later this morning, so at least that is scheduled, and moving ahead as planned. I’d rather spend my time lounging around, or back in bed to be honest with you. That’s how I’d love to spend my holiday weekend.
Three and a half more. I have chopped more wood than I initially realized. Might have found a bit of a groove, such as it were.
Pile One filled two bins, has enough for one more, plus some extras. (Fig 1.)Pile Two has also filled two bins with more than enough to fill two more (most likely) as these were longer logs to split. (Fig 2.)
So now I have a dilemma. With all four bins filled up, and split wood left over still on the ground waiting for a place to go, what do I do now? Do I keep on splitting and try to stack it up against the barn to get it out of everybody’s way, or do I stop splitting wood entirely. It’s not exactly fun, but I was enjoying myself a great deal. I like being outdoors on my own volition, and it gives me time to think about random shit whilst I mindlessly swing an axe. I’m getting exercise, fresh air, and kinda helping out a little bit, if you can call it that.
I did misplace my wedge today though. I cannot find it in the car, so when I used it yesterday I must have left it in the wood pile. Hopefully 8 find it tomorrow morning, or later today. It’s bright orange and about 55 cm in length. Not quite six inches long. It’s pretty beat up by now, so it might match the wood pile debris.
I don’t really have plans for anything else to do to kill time, get exercise, help out, and is mostly already paid for. I bought the axe(s), and the wedge, replaced my boots, and insoles, and have a pair of comfortable work pants, a decent belt, and a light jacket for the cold mornings. I’m all set, ready to go. Seems a shame to give up now that I’m on a roll with it.
I think I will take the holiday weekend to think about it. My eldest has a cross country meet on Tuesday which I want to go and see, so by next Wednesday morning I should have some sense of what I want to do. I’m so close to completing what I could in pile Two, I might just do it, and stack the wood by hand in the corner so that I can at least say I finished all that I could there. Tidy up the space a little bit too. Make it not such an eye sore. That seals it. Done. Made up my mind. That was easy.
It’s Friday today, so I need to cut the grass. I might surprise the girls by putting out our Halloween inflatables today too. See if that makes it feel more like spooky season! I’m going to finish my breakfast, then back outside I’ll go to get that done. Ciao Bella.
**WARNING GRAPHIC TMI ABOUT TO OCCUR IN YOUR FIELD OF VISION.
Taking NyQuil is like giving myself a colonic. Just vile stuff making its way out of me. Like dirty radiator water. Puddles of farm stall mud dribbling away like some mad man’s disease ridden hour glass. If it didn’t work so well at getting me to sleep through the night it would be several steps too far as far as medicine is concerned. I’m leaking like a Taco Bell meat gun dispenser over here. Feels like a gas bubble & a pebble have lodged themselves on top of the Push button for the garbage shoot of the human body, but I ain’t got no trash to go out anymore capiche? It’s all gone. Leave me alone. You’re flogging a dead horse here baby! Golly gee whiz mister IBS/Crohn’s Disease sure don’t sound like fun. No siree bob. Add in some tenderness from bloating, and a nose that’s running like a faucet and you’ve got yourself a case of Con-Crud, or public event illness where sick kids passed you by sneezing, coughing and being biological weapons of intestinal destruction. In a round about sort of way that is. No biggy. Just down four pounds today as a result… Yikes!
Oh boy! Was it ever tense, but the boys in blue have secured for themselves a trip to the ALCS! This hasn’t happened since 2015, and I was very sick with EB, and stuck in the isolation wing of our local hospital for eight days. I think they thought I had SARS, or MERS or some sort of COVID-19 type thing from out of China. The CDC people asked me about 100 times if I’d traveled to China, or had been with anybody who had. I had a sinus infection that depleted my immune system and I picked up EB from a walk in clinic visit. It was an ugly nine weeks, plus recovery time. But… He gets around to saying finally, on my last night in the hospital I was allowed to wander into the third floor patient lounge (alone) to watch the final game where we lost to the Kansas City Royals in game five. A tragedy. Perhaps we can remedy that this year with a trip to the World series! We haven’t won since the 92-93 back to backs. Could have done a three-peat but the league had a lock out, and the team disbanded several key components of the winning group. Shame that.
While I do currently have a sore throat, and the early sneezing stages of a cold, I am healthy enough to enjoy the ALCS from the comfort of my own home. The Blues get a couple of days rest as the deciding game for their opponent runs on Friday evening. Next week is going to be a tense one! I had such a tough time falling asleep after the win last night, even with the NyQuil coursing through my veins like a ten tonne truck. The adrenaline was counter acting the cold meds mightily.
Cold morning, with frost on the ground and only 3°C here. I wasn’t convinced I was going to split any wood today, but I eventually came around to it. I did another 90 minutes though I started later after fixing my wife’s tire, and taking a longer walking route through the pumpkin patch with the dog. Now that the bean portion of the field is done I don’t feel bad with the dog & I traipsing through the field standing on stuff. Tell you the truth, now I feel as though I want to take a nap. I’m exhausted. And hungry. But mainly tired. These ball games go so late into the night. Bye-bye Yankee Doodle dandies.
The split wood pile grows whilst the other shrinks in unison. (Fig 1.)
The stack of rounds is slowly but surely turning into a pile of split wood, fit for the pit. Fire pit that is. This pile is much nicer than the first one which has very stinky diseased wood in it, which you can smell from about 40-50 feet away, down wind of course. I put in a full 90 minutes today. Found a good number of chunks that did not want to come apart — at all. I eventually relented from swinging my axes, and resorted to using the wedge. Whacked it so much I broke a piece of the shock absorbing cap off the mini sledge 4 lbs mallet I use. Still in working order, I do believe the cap is a cosmetic piece. At least I hope it is.
So that has been my Wednesday morning. One early morning drop off for the second last cross-country practice, then another drop off thirty minutes later for the actual start of school. A quick pit stop back at the house to grab a jacket because right degrees Celsius in indirect sunlight is actually pretty chilly. Wandered down to the farm for a breezy dog walk, and then 90+ minutes spent on the wood pile. Now I’m home, and I can turn my attention back to the house, lawn, leaves etc…
Speaking of the lawn, I need to cut the grass before the kids and I can put all of our Halloween decorations up. I bought a new light timer so I don’t have to mess with the cords by hand once it’s set (until we have a power cut that is) and we can start to gear up for spooky season once Thanksgiving is done this weekend.
Oh my! My hand is sore, I really gave the wedge what for today, and my hand is aching because of it. We had climbing last night, my youngest & I, so that usually adds to my hand/forearm tenderness, and general tiredness. Came home feeling a bit off, couldn’t stay awake through the whole Jays game, but they were down 9-6 in the middle of the eighth so I went to sleep. Slept poorly, and today I have the early stages of a sore throat, so that is where I’m at. I gave myself two good friction burns up on the climbing walls yesterday. A teenie tiny one on my left hand, and a bigger one on the inside of my left knee that I seem to bang off of everything, and it woke me up whenever I rolled over in bed and touched it. I may be cranky! Definitely not the best mood.
I don’t see myself being able to work on pile too beyond Friday. Two more days should just about finish up all the rounds that I am capable of doing manually, and without a splitter. If I had a sizeable ram I could crush the shit out of all of the available wood (excepting logs, and too long/heavy chunks). But I do not have the money to buy one, and no real need for it. If we depended on this wood for all three family units to survive each winter, then yeah! Of course, shell out the dough don’t be stupid, but this is exercise, and modest site clean up while I’m at it. A splitter might help build lifting muscles, and grip strength, but I want my arms, shoulders, core, and back, and my legs to be involved. I can’t remain pear shaped for too much longer or I’ll develope additional health issues as I age.
I’m all over the place today. The lack of sleep really does have some serious knock-on effects for me. I just can’t function with little, or no sleep. Interrupted sleep is just as bad. I put new sheets on the bed, thought that they’d be a welcome change. Nope. No better for sleeping than my raggedy old worn through sheets set. Fodder for my shop rag bag now though. The old sheets that is. I toss & turn a lot, and wear through my sheets semi regularly. The more you know!
Being physically drained from splitting wood, climbing, and dog walking isn’t giving me any better of a night’s sleep. I had high hopes that I would just crash once the lights go out, but nope. Maybe the Jays game has me on edge? We get to relive it again tonight, so there’s that to look forward to.
So I got to splitting wood at the farm, after school drop off, and the dog walk, then realized (only as the sweat was streaming into my eyes that is) that I failed to bring a drink for myself or the dog, and I packed myself no breakfast either. Still did 45 minutes, but had to call it off early because I don’t do dehydration. I’m getting too old to beat my body up that badly and expect no ill effects. Shame because the rains had held off and it was just a warm drizzle. But I’ll get’em next time I’m sure. Still lots to split so going lighter for a day won’t ruin anybody’s plans.
Plus I had paid work to submit this morning, so I started it last night and completed it this morning before I normally would. Good vibes all around. Speaking of good vibes let us pray that the third Jays game in the ALDS goes off without a hitch tonight. I sure would love to see a clean sweep of the Yankees if they can swing it. I sure would love that.
Today is garbage day so my head was in the recycling, garbage can delivery mode, instead of thinking about chopping wood. I thought the rains would be heavier this morning, so I really didn’t think I could do any splitting today. I still should have brought food & water because now I have to wait until tomorrow to go back down there to do more. I have it on good authority that the temperature is to drop about ten degrees or more, so it’ll be chillier mornings from here on out.
It’s Tuesday today, so act accordingly. Ciao Bella!
What a wonderful weekend it was, but oh boy! Does the fair leave us all feeling fatigued afterwards. My goodness. All that extra walking, talking, and standing around waiting on our kids to ride the midway in the hot, hot sun for hours on end. It’s a fantastic time of year, but I’m glad we only do it once per year! Holy-moly.
The gear I use for splitting wood on the week daily: boots, goggles, sheep skin gloves, and Fiskars 8 lbs & a Husky 6 lbs maul, a 4 lbs mini sledge, and a Fiskars wedge. I have a Husky metal file just in case I whack the ground, or find a stone, or metal lodged in a round. (Fig 1.)The way Pile Two looks as of this morning. Still has a ways to go before I can head back to Pile One, or look to Pile Three behind the barn. (Fig 2.)
The splitting is moving along at a halfway decent pace. I feel lucky when I find several rounds that want to come apart easily, because when I have to spend twenty plus minutes hacking away at one round just to resort to my wedges it can feel like I’m not getting anywhere with the wood pile. The growing length and height of the pile tells me otherwise, but you know how it feels when things just aren’t flowing like you know they can be. Irritating, frustrating, and straight up maddening to be hung up on a single piece of wood for the better part of an hour. I’d much prefer they come apart with each whack so I can visibly see progress being made. But, I sorted through the pile and located some new bits to wait on when I head over tomorrow morning. Unless it’s raining too hard, then I guess I’ll focus on laundry, the floors, and cleaning the kitchen, because fair weekend produces a lot of additional required clean up.
Today I managed about 75 minutes of splitting before the sweat was pouring down my face, and stinging my eyes. We are expecting yet another October day to reach up into the high twenties Celsius. 26°C to be more precise. It was 28°C yesterday, and was slightly higher than that in Markham. Made for a warm walk at the farm with the dog at 11:00 am, after I had gone to do some grocery shopping earlier in the morning. I do like the sunshine, we need it to be dry in order for my father in law to get the beans up out of the various fields. The combine heads were acting up,cso they’ve been delayed — again, not just in getting to the beans, but my FIL has been sick too. Both an eye & ear infection all at the same time. He sounds rough.
What’s wood splitting without a glamour shot eh? (Fig 3.)
I will say that I don’t particularly care for logs with loads of knots, and or limb bases on them, because they are so fibrous, and tightly packed that it feels like hammering on concrete. My elbows and wrists complain a lot when I come across those kinds of pieces.
I have suitable boots, gloves, jacket, socks, and goggles for the task. I might think about buying myself a reasonable pair of work pants because the 36’s are falling off me while I work, and the belt isn’t doing much to keep them in place. I should have gone with the 34’s when I bought these pants two or so years ago now. But it looked like my weight was trending upwards fast at that point. I didn’t want to outgrow the waistline while I wasn’t being very active. Now that I climb twice per week, and walk the dog every day, and try to split wood at least three times per week I’m not trending upwards, but I’m also not really losing weight, or inches off my waist, or anything of that sort. I eat like shit, is my problem. But good tasting food is better than being thin feels, so here we are. I suppose suspenders might keep the pants from falling down, whilst simultaneously making me look twenty years older than an I am. So there is that option. Lean into the grey haired look. Ha.
Second load of laundry is in the wash. I have forwarded all of last week’s projects to the appropriate people, and I am building out a rendering as we speak. I might just break for lunch, and see what else the day brings me. Ciao Bella!
As I am totally wiped out from standing at the fair while my daughter and her friend rode rides on the midway for seven or so hours yesterday. I caught the sun a little too, so my face was a bit red after my shower last night. Felt great to get the dust off my skin though. This morning I am sleeping in, and have the dog as company while I do so. My wife is working the Photography section this morning, and I believe the kids went with her to help out, and spent some quality fair time alone with their mum. This is the first year in my memory that I can think of where my wife did not spend all Friday evening, and all day Saturday at the fair. I think she was a little out out about missing it because of our kids programming, and a birthday party, and my youngest general apathy towards the fair in general. The kids are too little to leave home alone in order for us to go on a date night to the fair without them. Won’t be long now though. Another year and my oldest will be nearing twelve, and she can take her babysitters course, and watch her little sister for a couple hours during the day without worry. It will be glorious! I shout FREEDOM!
Besides a dog walk, and some groceries I’m keeping this day as relaxed as possible. I am exhausted. Missed the Jays ALDS series opener last night too. But they won 10-1 against New York, so w00t-w00t! The Leafs lost 6-5 in overtime to Detroit, so not everything sports related was roses last night.
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