With Thoughts Like These – Page 12 – Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Clear signs that I am aging.

January 25, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Slept on my hand a bit funny last night, and it woke me up around 2:00am, and kept waking me intermittently throughout the night. Feels as though my body weight shifted some bones in my hand. The use of my thumb and pinky finger together is nearly impossible this morning. A very prominent ache sings from my knuckles to my wrist on the three fingers furthest from my thumb. The tendons ache as well. Brushing my teeth was so bothersome I switched to my other hand. I know that if I sit on either foot I can cause myself some momentary aches and pains, but three or four hours of sleep has really left a mark on my right hand this morning. I slept poorly afterward because I couldn’t find a comfortable position for the hand so that it didn’t hurt. I may wind up being a grumpy sob today. I’ll try to keep my mind on something other than the throbbing pain in my hand. So, yeah – aging is fun. I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. Ha.

It’s bothersome, sure, but I don’t imagine it’ll last more than a few days before it subsides or disappears altogether. Lesson learned. Don’t sleep on your hands! And other timely lessons I am bound to learn in the coming years. Such as, don’t let the Tums run out. Have aspirin on hand, buy a decent medical/emergency kit, own atleast one tourniquet, fix small problems before they balloon into giant costly ones. Simple things like that. Experience you earned by being dumb, so now you seem old and wise regarding your experience with such things.

Wednesday, humpday, middle of the week, day. All of the above! Snow is inbound. Snow is imminent! How much snow? Yeah I don’t know. I need to look it up. But the white stuff is coming to town once more, so warm up those shovels, and keep the Voltaren handy! Looks like a few days of constant accumulation, so don’t leave it all for the last day, but don’t rush out there right away, you’ll just wind up adding one additional shovelling session to your to-do list.

Finished book four, a good ways into book five, and then it’s back to the Robert Evan’s old Hollywood autobiography- again. And that means I have until the end of June to finish it, and still maintain my schedule for 12 books in a year. I would like it to not take that long, but it could if it had too. Though, not to lie, if I don’t finish it in another week, I’ll swap out for the Adrian Tchaikovsky book I got for Christmas, and will read that instead. I have a feeling I’ll still be trying to get to the end of the Bob Evans book around Christmas of this year! Ha. Can you imagine.

I bought an N.K Jemison trilogy that I’ve heard rave reviews of, and they look long(ish), so I can’t be dragging my feet if I want to complete the reading list. As a new to me author, I’m not sure what to expect. Will I fly through it, like a John Scalzi, or Michael Crighton novel, or will I slow walk it like a Stephen King, or a George R R Martin tome? I hope that for my sake they are fast and exciting reads. It’s great to finally find and add a new good author to the list. However to do that, you do wind up reading some less than stellar stuff too. That’s the gamble. Rave reviews by people you wouldn’t like don’t mean much. Have to pull those reviews from trusted sources, which can be difficult these days. Is it paid? Are they friends? Are the blurb authors from the same publisher? Do you trust the judgement of said blurb authors? All sorts of things factor in. Have they given you good references before to find books you enjoyed? Or did their previous endorsements kind of suck – at least in terms of your own interests. But I digress.

In positive news I don’t need to buy my books as large print just yet. My eyes, at least for now, seem to be holding up. My hearing is dog shit, but it’s been that way for a huge portion of my life. I do – *technically* need at least one hearing aid, but they are expensive, and I try to get all of my briefs, and change requests in written form, so that staves off much confusion from accents, speech volume, or ambient room noise that I find distracting. Also leaves a paper trail of why changes were made, and whom asked for them. Also, I don’t have an immediate boss, so I don’t need to listen to anyone talk on the daily, and that relieves stress in my life like you wouldn’t believe. Probably why I dislike books on tape so much! And why I watch the bulk of my movies and tv shows with the closed captions on.

Huh, aging, ain’t it grand! Ciao Bella!

Dribble, drip, drab, dram, & drop. One of these words is not like the others…

January 24, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Tuesday! It is here, and the sky is grey – again. A real Debbie Downer of a winter. I now realize why I was so happy and excited for the sunny blue skies last year. It’s because we usually just have this drab grey monotonously neutral coloured sky. These shades of grey do not inspire any sense of joy at all. But a beautiful blue sparkly, twinkling winter’s day, omg, that could be one for the story books. The gloom really does add a layer of suck, to an already dreary season. All the leaves, and flowers are gone, the colour sucked right out of the everyday. No green vibrant grass. The trees are all grey/brown, the streets are grey, the side walk, curbs, and gutters grey. Ugh! Hideous. But a big, bold, open crystal clear blue sky adds so much to a regular day. It’s a shame we do all of our lights based holidays before winter really gets going. January & February need their own lights show extravaganza of a holiday. Otherwise it all looks so damn bleak. Boo!

Almost done with January as it is. Not much longer and we’ll be looking at Valentine’s Day, then March Break & St. Patrick’s Day, then Easter, then the May 2-4 of Victoria Day, and by then POW! All the colour has come back, and lawn mowing is a thing, same with park play dates, bike riding, skateboards, and playing catch on the lawn. Spring, Summer and Fall are far superior seasons to our southern Ontario winters. So much more to get out and do! Bring it on!

Oh, reminds me. I need to sort and hang up all of yesterday’s laundry. The cycle, it never ends!

I had to put a pin in the Bob Evans book, to read something a little more contemporary & light hearted. Just opening up more space to get through it all, by reading other books from this years list now, which are shorter and less dense, as the length of the Evans book might take me a while to get through. I don’t want to miss my twelve books in a year goal, by getting slowed to a halt by one of the longer, and more densely written autobiographies. So, I figure when I feel it start to drag, I’ll put a pin in it, pick up another book that I can finish quickly, then go back to it, knowing that I haven’t squandered all of my time by not being smart about it. If that makes any sense.

Old Hollywood is intriguing, but – so many names, and places, and people, and actors, and motion pictures, and studios to keep track of. I have to look many of them up to get a sense of what he was gossiping, or spilling the tea over. My knowledge of Pre 1980 Hollywood is pretty bare bones to begin with. I thought this book might ignite something like an renaissance of old movies for me, but not really. At least not yet. I like it, but it’s longer than a good chunk of my other books, and even after reading seventy-eighty pages at a go, it feels as though I’m making little to no headway on finishing the damnable thing! It’s like the page count is growing as I’m reading it. Ha. I know it’s not, but it feels that way to me.

So I’ll detour for a day or two into some Fantasy realm type stuff, then hop back into the autobiography. Bim, bam, boom!

Oh!, are we doing this again? Ok… um… let me think. Hmmm…

January 23, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

We started off Domestic Duties Monday with a blitz! Had to rush into Markham for an oil change and get gas for this evenings extra curriculars with the kids. Lots of running around to do each evening from now until April or so. Then I hope we can cut back on something, for May & June. Though as the weather clears it isn’t so bad doing all this evening running about, playing chauffeur, papa coach, cheer leader, and equipment manager. So today includes, dishes, laundry (gotta keep all of these uniforms clean, and organized), vehicle maintenance, recycling gathering & sorting, and getting my day job projects off for approvals. This DDM is going to be chock a block with things to do. So much to do, so little time!

I’m super happy I don’t have to add commuting into the mix here, or a micro managing boss. The PA Day on Friday was a bit strange, as we couldn’t do much outside as there was little to no snow, but I hope that will change for the February 3rd PA Day now that we have snow on the ground, with an expectation of more to come. Hell, I even had to shovel the driveway, and paths to make way for all that should be coming later this week. Hopefully not 18 inches in one dumping, but eight to ten inches over three days wouldn’t be awful. The kids love making snowmen in the yard, or throwing tiny snowballs at the house as we mockingly shake our fists at them through the windows in faux outrage. Get some mileage out of their snow suits, and the yard too! Goes untouched for days or weeks if it’s cold but has no snow in it.

Took the kids for a walk at the mall to stretch our legs, look at stuff, then pick up lunch to bring home for all of us. We kept it together for about 90 minutes. And you know what? I’ll take it. No fights, no squabbling, no tantrums, and we all wore our masks, and got a warm comfortable stroll under our belts out in public. And, what’s better, about 80% of the people we saw, outside of the food court were masked up, so I was pretty happy about that. Lots of decorations up for the lunar new year, and we loved to see it all. Lots of red and gold accents. And lots of rabbit imagery which my kids enjoyed. A great lazy Sunday mooch about. I hope to one day be able to spend the whole day walking Square One in Mississauga, have lunch, watch a movie, wander around just looking at stuff. Perhaps shop for an item or two. Spend some quality time with my kids on our own, as my wife “HATES” to walk around a mall aimlessly or to go shop in person. I like it. I loved it as a kid, and I love it now. Beyond food, and maybe buying a new book it wasn’t to spend money, but get out, to walk in comfortable temperatures, watch people, and see what’s new in fashion and other things I don’t really keep tabs on anymore. Plus if we can work both a lunch, and a movie screening into the deal that will give my wife six to eight hours of alone time to nap, or work, or read uninterrupted for a change. I think the kids are still too young for an outing of that length, but over time we can build up to it. That would make me happy. Maybe in the late spring I’ll try for a day at Wonderland with the kids, see if an amusement park can bump up their daytime outing hours? Possibly. Depends on work, but I think I can swing it!

I must have been talking in my sleep – to myself.

January 22, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Because I would swear up and down that I had the perfect topic to write about today, and that I came up with an exceptional title, and had several points I was going to cover, and now I’m here, and… – blank. Damnit! It’s right there, on the tip of my brain, I know I went over it a bunch of times. Had to of been a very convincing dream/partial waking moment. I don’t know what to say. Oh, oh that sparked it!

I was going to write about how in my dreams I misremember the way architecture looks about places I have spent a lot of time, and over the years (after leaving) I have the same reoccurring dreams that utilize this new, and fantastical designs for the school campus, that when I go back after a few decades I’m shocked to recall just how off my dreams of the places really are. And it’s really very offputting. I have a terrible memory for picking out the year that things happen. Unless it’s really recent, or super huge, like getting married or the birth of my kids. But other life events, no chance. It all runs together in a big muddy puddle. That’s beside the point. I convince myself after years of the same dreams about places, where everything is somewhat similar to reality. Like the entrance to rooms, carpet, tiles, cement structures are very much real, but my dream moves them into new layouts or positions on the grounds, and after repeat exposure I become certain that that is how it actually was. But then you go back and it’s like – oh yeah!, my dreams totally rearranged things, how could I forget! What else am I misremembering? You know, do I recall things about other people that are cobbled together from real actions, but are attributed to the wrong person/people? Am I misremembering things that I think I have/not done? Makes me wonder. Is any of that normal? Also why am I dreaming about these regular places but giving them fantastical redesigns, and then sticking with the redesign when I recall things that have happened there? Did I dream those things that happened too? No, I have ticket stubs, photos, uniforms, text books, pages of notes, and various diplomas and certifications as receipts for being there. It’s not a delusion. Ha.

I bet that if you visited all of the universities, colleges, and training centers I have attended, and those I just visited (like U of G or U of T) you could stitch together photos of real spots to recreate a mosaic of much of what I misremember these places looking like in my dreams.

Otherwise today is Sunday January 22nd of 2023. We had a very light sprinkling of snow last night, the temperature is hovering around minus three, which is warmer than it should be. Usually by now we get in to the late teens, early twenties of below zero temperatures. According to ten years worth of facebook memory posts that is.

So I did have the conversation with myself in bed this morning. It must have occurred right as I was in the middle of coming to though. Ha. What a way to start my day. Ciao Bella!

All is quiet on the southern front.

January 21, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

I don’t hear foot steps, screaming, or any kind of action upstairs, so the kids are either sound asleep (highly unlikely) or watching netflix in their mother’s bed. Which is usually punctuated with squeals, screams, kicking and slapping, as they jostle for position on the pillows, and for duvet coverage in the warmth of the king size comforter. None of which I can hear. Doesn’t mean that none of it is currently happening, just that I can’t hear it over the drone of my floor fan, dehumidifier, furnace, and the ceiling. Also – mic check, I’m hard of hearing in my left ear, so that adds a layer of difficulty to spying from the basement guest room. I can imagine, as I break the plane by crossing the upstairs threshold that it is absolute bedlam up there, and my sonic white noise bubble just does an excellent job of hiding it all. Or, now hear me out, because it’s still dark out until 8:00am or later on cloudy days, maybe they actually slept in? I doubt that, but it could one day be true. Right? One day they will both want to sleep in? Won’t they?

Yesterday’s PA Day wasn’t awful, the kids were fairly well behaved throughout the day. We even spent 2 hours in the frigid park. All of us wound up with bright rosy wind burned cheeks. It snowed a little, but nothing like what we were hoping for. I wanted four to six inches so that they could go tobogganing in the park, but it was mostly just frost glazed grass. Not ideal. Lots of freezing rain, drizzle, fog this year. I have to think that there will be more of it to come with how weird our winter is this year.

Shout out to my niece who turned fourteen today! Happy birthday Ava Jane! Hope you have a great weekend! Ciao Bella.

What to build next…

January 14, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

I know I have a model kit on my work bench at the moment but I’m starting to think about building a small self contained terrain piece. Like a specific set of ruins for a church or temple. I have a couple of good chunks of foam board left, and a whole bunch of air dry clay that I recently recieved. I guess if I can find a brick pattern stamp I could do the flooring aswell inside the terrain piece. Then using industrial adhesive, super glue, and a hot glue gun, I could put it all together pretty quickly. Give me the chance to try properly ruined architecture.

I don’t have any more trees on hand, but I do have grasses, scrub brush, and a few shrubs and flowers. So it’s not like it’ll end up barren looking. I have sand, stone and grout too. I could do something from a desert climate. This is when I wish I had a closet full of rock moulds, plaster, trees, and static grasses & an applicator. Damn!

I don’t have a whole lot of room left to store stuff, so it’ll need to be shoe box size or smaller. My shelves aren’t that tall, so I can’t make the whole temple or church ruin. I guess it would be more of a diorama piece. Damn. Now I’m excited about it. It’s going to stay on my mind for ages now. But I already bought a new paint series of eight colours for my VF-1 Valkyrie model. I should really complete that first. I should… but.

Box of parts that need to be cut off sprues, and partially assembled before I can prime & paint them.

The other day I had an idea for a new sculpted bust too. So I’m going to need to make a bunch of new bases on the lathe. That takes a day or two as I have to glue up a bunch of Walnut pieces, or find a suitable maple log portion to be turned into fancy rounds. That’s a good way to get my wood working fix in without having to touch a hundred icy cold hand tools. If I use a long enough chunk of wood I can get at least four or five bases out of it. Plus sanding and slicing it up, more sanding and finish. That will satiate a bunch of create pangs I’ve been having.

I think I am slightly more interested in painting my model kit, than the initial (and very important) build up. I need to be more slow and methodical, so that it looks better generally than the last one I constructed a few years ago, and only recently painted. I can see several rough spot where I didn’t cut all of the tabs away. And my build was sloppy. Forgotten pieces, and glued on elements that shifted or fell over entirely. My decal application left much to be desired as well. Yikes.

Previous build up, with recent amateur paint job.

Plus a new larger paid project came in so I can’t jump on any of this stuff right away until the majority of my day job projects are well under way. Glad for the work though. So now I just have more time to day dream about my hobbies before I actually start any side projects. Not to worry. Once I’m in a comfortable spot with my open design jobs, I can pick up a brush, nippers, or a file and chip away at all of this stuff. Plus somewhere in the middle I will find the time to play guitar/bass and the keyboard songs I know. Sometimes I think I have too many hobbies, but they really do add a dash of something extra to my daily life. So not all bad then eh? Right.

Dial 3-9-5 to make all outbound calls.

January 13, 2023January 13, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Getting the hang of a new phone system was always a huge hassle when starting a new job. Was it a VOIP capable phone, did you need a pass code, extension number or ID to reach your voicemail. Do people even leave voicemails anymore when you could just text or email? I had friends who would just mass delete all messages in their inbox if there were too many to be dealt with, thinking that if anything was truly important you’d write back again shortly. I hated that. I spent time archiving messages to maintain a paper trail regarding all requested changes on a project. For the most part it saved my bacon. Until you get a verbal edit request with no written follow up. Then it becomes your word against theirs. Ugly stuff.

Key cards, fobs, security check points, all exciting ways to get a new hassle tucked into your daily life. As much as I look forward to transitioning to full time in the coming years as my kids get older, and more self reliant, I don’t think I will ever return to working for someone else full time. It would have to be a dream come true job, and not just money either. A real – come to jesus – heaven on earth – moving mountains – best job of my life opportunity to pick up a commute again. But you know what they say, never say never.

If everything goes pear shaped I’d be the first to pound pavement (electronic or not) with a resume & portfolio in hand. We’re all just three missed meals away from chaos, such as it were. It’s easier to have high standards when every need you have is being met. Take a couple of the important things away and those standards drop precipitously. I remember college & university well. I worked hours, jobs, and projects I swore I’d never touch again once I got my degrees and certificates. But if things got bad enough, I’d swallow my pride and do it all again. I’d hate it, and myself, but I would do those jobs again if I HAD too.

You know that white winter you were after instead of the rain? Yeah. It’s here now. Thanks. Bye. We have somewhere between five and six inches of snow over night. So fear not. Tobogganing and skiing, and snowboarding are back on the menu! If you are so inclined that is. I’d like to think that I am, but I’d be put off after the first work e-mail that came in which I couldn’t do anything about while on the slopes. As a freelancer all I have (besides the perceived quality of the work) is my reputation. And ditching work to hit the slopes, I feel, would negatively affect that perception. On the other hand, a day outside on the slopes would make you feel alive, more human, and refreshed. So it could – potentially create a more open mindset allowing for increased creativity and productivity? Or I’d be exhausted, need a nap and give the entire day a miss. Toss up. Could go either way. No matter, not on the docket for today anyway. That’s a struggle future me will have to wrestle with.

How is it that as soon as I vacuum the floor my kids immediately choose to eat crumbly foods and leave a mess all over the damn room. Goodness. I could scream! They just know how to push my buttons. Wrappers left on the couch. Plates and cups left in the family room. Crumbs on the floor. Not taking their soaking wet gloves out of their back packs, nor saying they had them in there in the first place. Leaving coats, snowpants and gear on the floor right inside the front entrance way. Ugh. Madness. “Hang up your coats. Socks and sweaters in your rooms” it’s a mantra with us. And about 1,500 repetitions in sometimes it clicks. Mostly it falls on deaf ears, but I persist! One day these children will not be slobs! They will care for their belongings in a manner that encourages longevity! They will know: laundry, cooking, cleaning, sewing, money management, work ethics, car maintenance, lawn care, house maintenance, leaves & trees & gardening, wood working, music, reading and art. Today is not that day, but over time, they will learn it all! Damn it!

The plan, the plan. What!?! Is the plan…

January 2, 2023January 2, 2023greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

I think I’m going to aim for 400 days of blogging, creative writing, and a general sense of nonsense and then reassess. I didn’t really have a plan beyond wanting to do a little writing every day for a year, and well…. now I am beyond that by a slight margin. I don’t have any goals for writing beyond the mere act of doing it. I try to get more concise. To limit run on sentences. To be more coherent in general. I’d actually need to reread a portion of last years posts to see if I managed to achieve any of those things. So, I’ll go out on a limb and I will say, sorta, kinda, maybe?

I do use this medium to moan, and lament about daily struggles and annoyances. But believe you me, I don’t have it too bad. I’m doing just fine. I could do with slightly better gut health, but otherwise, we’re all good. I just love to narrate a good gripe, every now and again. For those at home keeping score, I have Domestic Duties Monday’s, which sometimes gets bumped to Tuesday. I occasionally do movie reviews. Mostly if they are awful, or evoke some type of emotional response from me. Rage being a perfectly reasonable response to write about.

Rarely, I will cover retro gaming with my kids. As I have access to a Sega Master System, PS1, Nintendo 64, Super NES, Atari game system, Xbox , and an Xbox 360. So for older games we got you covered! I had kids so the PS4 & PS5 sailed right by me without waving. So nothing more recent than late stage 360 games get reviewed here.

I sometimes cover wood working projects, home DIY items, and my own spin on sculpting monster/creature busts and figures. I don’t recall ever discussing my music tastes, or instruments, but I can if I felt like it. I have taken to assembling an instrument stock pile, so that my kids have access should the mood take them. Key board, guitars, possibly drums, a violin, and a clarinet. Maybe we’ll form a family band just for kicks to keep ourselves occupied in the future. Who knows.

I just feel like I want to quit dreaming about things, and just go do them, regardless of being an awful noob and all. I don’t need to be any good, I just want to do the things, and experience them first hand, instead of watching others do the thing on YouTube. Perhaps building a new skill, or just preparing the way for my kids to learn, and do new things too. No point being miserable doing only what others expect of you. That way lies madness, depression and misery.

So in short, I don’t know how much longer I plan to keep going on a daily basis, but whatever I do, it’ll be more of the same. With the caveat that I might stumble upon a good short story theme or character, and then light up this phone with new installments. Fingers crossed. Ciao Bella!

A grand ole time doing a year end clear out of unfinished business.

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Striking projects from my list, left, right and centre. It’s been a busy and productive year, and I have used my quiet days to finish all my bust sculpt painting.

I managed to do about three hundred water slide decals on the Double Zeta Gundam I got for Christmas several years ago, and gloss coated it, and did the final assembly.

And most recently I finally got around to painting, adding the water slide decals, and then practice weathering my VF-1 Macross Gerwalk 1/72 scale model which has been built and left untouched for ages. I will readily admit I wanted a pristine, off the factory floor paint job, but I mucked it up, so a rusted beat up version is how I salvaged my work, and got a chance to practice some new weathering techniques and grime washes.

Last pass with grime, chipping, and rust effects.

** I’ve just realized I cheated a bit with the far away photo. So here is a closer view, top down, of some of that grime, chipping, rust, and dirt weathering i did. You can see just how askew some of my decals are. The gritty paint application made them far less easy to manoeuvre when placed incorrectly. Or not at all in some cases due to the friction from a lumpy/textured surface finish..

I have to come to terms with the fact that my one size fits all airbrush is great for broad surfaces, and gradients (think body of sculptures I make) and not so keen for panel lines and fine detail. The unit , or gun more specifically, isn’t built for fine detail and finesse work. Also my taping and masking could use some more practice. I also need to leave my mechanical models in pieces so that I can add all the details in without fighting the model physically to do so. I’ll have to keep all of that in mind when I finally tackle my massive resin chonker that currently resides, in pieces in my office closet. It’ll stand nearly 16 inches tall when done. I don’t want to rush, nor fuck it up. I bought it the year my eldest was born, and wanted to get good at the technical side of model building before I got into it. Not entirely there yet, but if i don’t start it, i never will. It’s going to be slow moving, because i have to wash all the mould release off of the resin. Sand it all, pull the pour spouts off the larger chunks, fill holes, straighten out warped bits, and then do more sanding, and panel line clean up. Could be 200 to 300 hours of work. Including masking, painting, ink washes, and decals. Magnets and pins. Oh my. This thing is a real under taking. Makes me nervous just to think about!

Tomorrow is supposed to be a massive storm day. So I am wrestling with whether or not to walk the kids to & from school tomorrow, or have them stay home. I don’t think I’ll have any new work tomorrow, so it’s just a matter of if they fight all morning, or look as though they can sit and watch a movie in peace. We can play in the snow too, but not if they are fighting and whiney. We gotta clean up if they want Santa to have any room to put gifts on the floor by the Christmas tree. I also need to buy them some Excedrin PM, to get them into bed at a reasonable hour come Christmas Eve! They’re too pumped up! So amped it! So. Much. Energy. All the time with them, it’s just go, go , go, and what have you done for me lately! Ha. My fault, I suppose. Too nice.

All the best to you and yours. Stay well out there. Be safe in the coming storm. Ciao Bella!

***Additional note: I meant to add that I also painted up the Aliens from my Nemesis board game from Awaken Realms. That was a fairly quick job, as I used the air brush for that. It involved priming the pieces black. Then using a grey primer to add a zenithal high light from the top down. Then one quick blast of a blue grey paint, with some blood red splotches for the carnage those aliens cause. Took me about an hour to paint up sixteen or so 75mm items on 50mm bases. I could always go back to pick out some finer details, but I think it’s great as is. I could do the Void Seeders next, but we will see. My kids are still too little to play a competitive board game like this. I have boxes of monsters from Tainted Grail, Fall of Avalon to give a once over too. I think I want to give them more than just a one colour splash with a sepia wash though. That could take weeks with how many there are. No matter. That’s a 2023 issue, or later. Cheers!

Up before 5:00 am…

December 21, 2022December 21, 2022greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Too scared she’ll miss the bus for the Royal Ontario Museum trip today. Not that the bus isn’t going to leave until around 9:00am or anything. No, had to be up and dressed, waiting at the door before I even woke up this morning. Lord knows what the kids will do come Christmas morning!

We did hit a small snag, in that our usual vehicle is in the shop for repairs so we have a borrowed vehicle for a few days. One that does not contain an ice scraper, so I had I sit in it while it warmed up enough to clear the windshield. Then I used the blade of my hands to clear tactical spots on the side windows so that I could see out, and use the mirrors. The spare scraper from inside the house has gone missing, which I wasn’t aware it had even been used yet, by anyone. So that reserve item needs to be found and/or replaced sharpish. Crisis was averted and we made it to school without too many tears or outbursts from either kid. The youngest has had her nose out of joint for a few days due to all the build up concerning the bus rides and ROM trip into downtown. She is a jealous little beastie. Not good with expressing joy for others if she isn’t getting anything out of the situation either. We will need to work on that. But, in the end I got them to school, dressed, and without tears being shed. A win for me, a slight one at that, but I’ll take it.

My lone nostril issue seems to fade in, fade out as the days go by. I have noticed that when I take my temperature it can range from anywhere between 35.6° to 37.1° Celcius. Which seems weird to me. But no positivity on a RAT, and no other issues I can think of. Fatigue has subsided, almost as quickly as it came on, but that’s pretty standard for me. Nasty guts is no barometer to go by for me for new or worsening illness, so all things being equal, that’s par for the course in my life currently. I can breathe out of both nostrils no new head aches. No sore throat. No cough or lung/rib pain. Sense of smell and taste are very much alive & well. Possibly just a cold? Hard to know at this point. It wasn’t all that bad. Just felt kinda off. Not wretchedly ill, as with other nasty bugs we’ve caught before.

Funny story, I developed Crohn’s Disease about six months after having the worst flu of my life, one Christmas when I was twelve. My grand parents were visiting from England that year, and I was in my pj’s, lying on the floor of the family room watching tv with my family, when I burped out of no where. And I remember turning away from the tv to tell my mum, “I can taste rotten eggs”. She gave me a puzzled look, and by the following morning I was feverish, and vomiting and having all sorts of gastric distress.

Do you remember that old Tom Petty music video about Alice in wonderland where her body becomes cake and the mad hatter and the rabbit eat her as she watches and screams, while lying on a table? That happened in my dream. And a dark black room, with white and black checker board floors began to get longer, as if the rear wall was falling away, and the floors curled, and buckled, and bulged, as my bed became all topsy turvy like a Tim Burton film set. I had days of a high fever, and had the same fifteen seconds of dream a thousand times over on repeat, until it just cleared up and went away. – Then one late May afternoon when at Canada’s Wonderland on a school trip Crohn’s Disease decided to make itself known to me, and that has been my life ever since. That was 2013. Fun times. Weird memory to recall so vividly. Huh. I am not entirely sure if that was when I developed the grey forelock of hair that I’ve had since forever, but is not in any childhood photos before my early teens. Could be. Or maybe not.

As of 4:48pm today we are officially into winter! A new season is upon us. And the shortest day will happen, and then the evenings will ever so slowly begin to get lighter later. Just a handful of seconds per day. I hope you have a wonderful winter break. And have restful holidays whatever you celebrate. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

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