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Nearly three days on and I’ve still got itchy bite marks from the damn ground wasps that swarmed me on Sunday morning. With any luck these deep morning frosts will kill them off fairly quickly and I can go back to splitting sooner than later. I guess we will wait and see if I catch the furniture building bug and decide that that’s what I’m doing in my down time from now until winter comes. Did I mention that the fan on my Mr Heater Big Buddy died after a single season with one use? I changed the batteries and everything, Nada. But the propane still lights, and it heats up pretty well, it just doesn’t move the air around by itself anymore. I now use a secondary fan/element heater to do that. I am weary of the open flame heater because of saw dust particles catching flame and igniting while I’m working. Not a good look to spontaneously combust my garage when I’m in it. Not a good look to do it when we’re not there either. Ha!

Sleeping through the night has been a challenge since Sunday because my After bite and Benadryl creams seem to wear off around 2:00 am, and then I am plagued by full body itches that wake me up. I’m certain the dog hates it too. I’ve used cooling gels, scrubs and antihistamine creams but the incessant itch comes back on all eight bite locations. Some worse than others. Like my face & neck are bad, and my leg & hip itch just as much. It could have been so much worse, so I keep telling myself. I made out pretty well given how many wasps swarmed me while I was occupied weed eating at the farm.

Tried to get ahead over the weekend and wound up weed eating right over a ground wasp nest. Took fewer than ten bite/stings because I was covered  from head to toe because it was cool and raining. Luckily! So now I’m going to leave that portion alone until we get consistent Frost’s which will cause the wasps to die off and/or go dormant. Then I can proceed. So instead I took the hour to fill three of the four bins and set up the camp site for my wife’s Guide group that is coming tomorrow. I basically filled all three bins from my first stack of split wood. I probably have enough left to fill four more! Yikes.

Now I can go home and work. The waste wood here can get tipped into the trees because I am not touching any more of this batch. The bottoms all rotten and the wood explodes into shards instead of splitting into nice prices. Unfortunately the folks whom dumped it didn’t stack it so it’s water logged and rotting from the inside out, and top to bottom. Not to worry though we have lots!

Fair weekend is done for another year, thankfully. I only spent ten hours there, so a short one this year. I didn’t go to meet anyone and that saved me about twelve additional hours of standing and walking. I need to put some arts & crafts on my immediate to-do list in preparation of next year. I’m all pumped up for it and I have the most time possible if I start now.

I was trying to clear the weeds around the biggest wood pile behind the barn and stumbled upon a wasps nest in amongst the older more rotten logs. I got hit a good eight times much to my chagrin. Luckily the dog is ok. I did have to pull over three separate times to let wasps out of the car, and swipe them off of me. I was wearing full length pants, a bulky sweater and a jacket so many of the potential swarms stings were muted. But one went up my shirt and got my hip real good, and the top of my butt, and the face/neck stings were direct hits. Could have been far worse, though I’m not thrilled about the stings I did get. Ha!

On the plus side the weed eating is just about done. So tomorrow I will stack wood in the first pile, and I might take a break and work on my furniture build. See if we can’t get some Frost’s to roll in and subdue the wasps before I go back. The nest looks to be about ten to fifteen feet over from where I had planned to start on the spring time bucked bits, so that’s a no-go right this moment.

I am now out of the shower, and have rubbed myself down with after bite and benadryl creams, and am in the process of washing all the clothes that I had on to get rid of any angry wasp pheromones so they don’t come back at me upon my return.

Also checked myself for ticks while I was in the shower and so far I’m all good there too. My face and hip do hurt pretty good right now, I’m not going to lie. I was so caught up in sweeping down all the long grasses and weeds I didn’t even notice the swarm. My safety goggles and headphones protected my eyes and ears, but my neck and cheek still got got, if you know what I mean.

I’d swear that at any one point I probably had ten to fifteen wasps on me just going to town with their stingers. Thank god it’s cool and rainy and I had all these extra clothes on otherwise instead of just eight or so stings, I’d have fifty or more – easily. Yuck! Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

Take care of yourselves out there. Be aware of your surroundings! Wear the appropriate PPE.

Both of my kids did the butter sculpting competition this year along with me, so that was a tonne of fun. My older child received another beauty of a rosette for her first place finish, to accompany her even bigger rosette from her Christmas painting in the Home Craft building. She was very excited, and us along with her. This was her second year competing. My youngest entered for the first time this year and made a lovy cob of corn. She worked very hard and I am proud that she came out and gave it a lot of effort.

I was able to place second, which I was disappointed with, though I did have fun on my second year of competing. I lost to the grand champion of the two day event, a very spectacular bunny rabbit, so that made me feel less bad. Losing to the best of the best is never fun, but it’s the kindest way to tell myself I lost. Ha! I have pinned my blue 2nd place ribbon to last year’s rosette display in my office. Seems I was good for second place in multiple events, as my ceramic bust sculpt that I painted won the same prize.

I was in no mood for photos of my own work so once they announced, and we all clapped & cheered like adults, I walked away and didn’t look back. I do believe my kids took photos of my entry, but I don’t have those photos on hand. Oh well! Better luck next year.

All told we were there for four hours last night. Caught the fireworks and saw some of the Monster Truck Rally. What we didn’t see we definitely heard! Ha. We did pretty well as a family. A fair few ribbons for our troubles.

Now it’s Friday and it is still raining a bit. We did the ride night in the drizzle. Luckily it wasn’t raining too hard, but we did end up with wet butts. Good time. Memorable night.

My ankles ache from walking around the fair all ready so lord help me with the next three days! It’s been quite some time since I’ve had insomnia like this. Usually I need a midnight pee and that’s that. I wonder if I’m excited for the butter sculpting contest? Time will tell.

Whilst not a downpour there is considerable moisture and precipitation in the air which would make my handling an axe potentially dangerous. So with the current humidex, rainfall, and fog in the air I have decided to take a rest day from splitting wood. Not how I’d like to start the month or end the week when I was on a roll. September was exceedingly dry so we need the rain. My grass is parched. It’s worse looking now than during the height of summer when temps regularly reach 40°C in full sun. We got several heavy cloud bursts during those months but September ended up drier than a bone. Weird. So with the weather in mind, and my general clumsiness, I didn’t think that trying to maintain my grasp on an 8 lbs maul was all together likely. That could lead to injury or a flying axe through a window of the van, or worse yet, striking a lazing dog twenty feet away. None of which sounds good to me.

The fair starts today so obviously it’s going to rain. Forecast shows good weather for Fri, Sat & Sun so at least there is that to look forward to. Going to be a wet evening sitting in the rain to ride anything that isn’t covered from the elements. No snow this year which is good. Likely an early frost if this year acts like any other that preceded it.

Tonight is a modified meet the teacher night, so I can go visit with one of the two children’s home room teachers. There isn’t time to wait until 6:00 pm for all the other ones to become available. I’m sure we will catch them another time in first semester. My wife has her first rugby game today somewhere nearby, so she’ll be home at a reasonable hour to go to the fair in one car as a family. That won’t always be the case this weekend, but it is good to start out the festivities as a united group before splintering apart for parties, and other events.

Tomorrow night is the butter carving competition which I have myself and both kid’s signed up for. Should be a lot of fun. If the temperature is reasonable and not blisteringly hot then more sculpts will last longer outside of the fridges. While I’d love to say I intend to defend my title as grand champion, and first place finisher, I’m just looking to have fun and be creative outside of the house for a bit. All told it’s about 2 hours long and I get to sit down while I work. Well worth the effort I put forward.

I’d be lying if I didn’t at least hope to win again, but the competition is stiff and other people need to win too otherwise folks will stop joining in on all the fun. Would I be pleased as punch to walk around with this year’s ribbons? You bet your sweet ass I would! I’m just not foolish enough to think I have it locked down. I’m trying to enjoy the event not get worked into a lather about it.

So now it’s Thursday, rainy and I’m not splitting wood nor being very active. I could fire up the planer and get moving on the front entrance storage unit, or I could veg out and wait for work emails or the desire to clean up around the house to kick in. We shall have to wait and see.

Every time I think I’m just about done with the wood wouldn’t you know it I find more buried in the back of the lot. So while I thought today was the last day, it could be next week depending on the weather. If it’s drizzle tomorrow I can work in that, but if it’s a downpour then things will have to wait for clearer skies.

If I add my 90 minutes from today that puts my monthly total at 18 hours even. Not bad. I think that was very manageable. While neither the scales nor the way my pants/shirts fit show any  changes, I’ve got to believe that I am working towards something positive physically. I certainly sweat like a pig once I get rolling. Lifting, bending, grabbing & throwing, plus all the swinging and hard chops, not to mention whacking with the mallet. At some point I hope my pants begin to fit less snuggly. I’m less concerned about the number on the scale, and more concerned with the flab, fat, and rolls I’ve developed as I age.

The fair starts after school tomorrow, so that should be a whole lot of fun. First I need to stop in and meet my daughters teacher at 3:15 pm, and then we can sort ourselves out with fair food and going to look at all of our entries. Should be a pretty gnarly weekend even if 8 do say so myself.

I even mowed the lawn, mulched the leaves and did some weed eating. Now I can answer work emails and think about having lunch. Happy hump day!

I set aside an hour of time today (after delivering all of our Fair entries) and I built a storage/travel box for all of my wood splitting gear so as to no longer have individual missiles strewn across the back of the van each morning when I head to and from the farm. I now have both mauls, my mallet, two wedges and the hookaroon safely encased in a skip planed Walnut open top box. It has room for my gloves, metal files, a third axe that isn’t a maul, and whatever else I might like, maybe ear plugs and safety goggles? Seems like a solid bet to me.

It isn’t fancy, and I didn’t spend too much time on it. A few rounded edges, and some broken corners should stop me from cutting myself on it. Now it’s all located in one spot and I can hook it to a belt loop in the back of the van. No more loose tools as bludgeoning impacts during an emergency stop. Makes us all a little safer.

Now I can take everything in and out of the garage in one go, or leave the box tied in indefinitely. I’m not sure yet. I like having the option to remove it when grocery shopping because with the extra chair always up I’m growing shy on available space. I have all of the extra stuff out of my wife’s old car in the van too. That should either go in her new car, or get filed away in the garage. I don’t need random things I don’t use strewn across the back of the van. I just spent a few hours two Sundays ago cleaning it up, so I want to keep it tidy. I found juice boxes and wrappers back by the kids seats and need to throw that out as well. Sloppy children.

No matter. The AxeBox is done, and I can strike it off my list of things to build. If I had scheduled my time better I could have put a whole day into it and made it something really nice, but I’ll settle for utilitarian and more importantly, done. Not held up in production hell because I can’t decide on a design feature or joinery aesthetic. Done is better than perfect!

Also I desperately underestimated the lengths of rope needed for the side handles. I should have gone in with double the amount I had set aside. Live and learn. I can always go back to make changes later. We have the technology. I can freely admit when I’ve cocked something up. I’m a grown man, I’ll survive the embarrassment.

Once the weather crisps up a little more and I’m no longer having as much fun with wood splitting I will return to the front entrance storage unit. Stay tuned for that.