Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Freshly washed sheets, and the dog got up already so I’m just here enjoying the soft whir of my floor fan as I fall in and out of sleep. The intensity of the sun is pretty strong for 9:00 am. Must be from the fact I removed some greenery from the front garden bed. We had four pumpkin vines with only two pumpkins on them in total. One of which has been bored into by a rodent killing it’s usefulness as a carving pumpkins as it will rot before Halloween since it’s been breached. And the other pumpkin is smaller and less developed. So at this point both the pumpkins and tomatoes are a lost cause. I had two tomato plants with zero blooms or tomatoes on them. My raspberries didn’t produce much fruit this year. My neighbours stole my grapes, animals took my apples and strawberries, and the birds took my Cherries. I sure hope I didn’t need to count on those food stuffs to get through winter or next spring given the current state of the world.

The freshly planted fruit trees have so far made it through spring and summer and are faring ok so far this fall. I do hope they last the winter and continue to grow over the years to come. If nothing else the house could use more cooling shade from nearby trees. Keep our AC use to a minimum if we have a healthy canopy from our maintained trees. Stop the living room from burning up all summer long from excess direct sunlight. Natural light is great, but feeling like living inside a greenhouse full of steam and moisture is not my ideal way to spend a summer. Let’s take the temps down a couple notches inside our living room at least.

Now the mornings and nights are single digits I find it so much easier to sleep. Feels good when the overall humidity and moisture level drops too. Sheets and towels feel a bit drier to the touch. I like that. Not so dry it makes us all itch, but to lose the ever present summer time dampness from the air is a real treat. AC is great but it does make certain things constantly feel unnaturally damp. Great for mould, not so good for our health.

The Markham Fair starts this week. Entries go in on Tuesday, get judged on Wednesday, and then we are go, go, go! Until Sunday night when we have to go pick up all of our entries and the fair is done for another year. Fantastic time of year. We love it deeply, but by Sunday night we are all happy that it’s done. I’ll likely get more steps in over those four days of this weekend than I would in a typical month of the winter. We’re looking at 20,000 – 30,000 steps per day as we circle the grounds by ourselves, with family, with friends, with events and shows, and looking for food options, and doing endless laps of the midway with my children, nieces and nephew.

By the end I’d kill for a rascal scooter or golf cart to haul my ass about. Not to mention having a place to put a drink or a bag instead of schlepping the kids stuff about all day. Although I can feel the hormonal balance of the house shifting as my eldest gets closer to her twelfth birthday, and the teen years are going to be a bumpy ride. So I’ll enjoy their presence while I can, because I’m sure that soon enough she’ll assert her independence and will want to do fair stuff away from us with her gaggle of friends instead. Getting old is wild!

These morning wood splitting sessions I’ve been enjoying so much have left me with a rather tanned face and lower arms. I did not believe the sun’s rays to be this strong in late September when the temperature is single digits. Either that or I have touched my face with some sort of irritant and made my cheeks inflamed and hot to the touch in the evenings. Could just as easily be the case as I do have sensitive skin. It’s a burden I bear. Luckily I still wear hats and sunscreen 99% of the time, but with all the sweating and face wiping I’m leaving myself exposed, or adding a mixture of stuff that’s irritating my skin. No time for double blind studies, control groups and placebo efforts to uncover the truth. Trust me bro!

No matter, it is now Saturday so no more splitting for two whole days and then depending on next week’s work schedule I can see where I land come Monday. No appointments that I am aware of, though we are expecting rain next week, and the soya beans can begin next week too. Farm might be too busy with activity to comfortably swing an axe and keep the dog out of harm’s way.

The kids are doing a 3D printing lab session today so I guess we will climb tomorrow instead? Or go later on today if we all feel like it. Haven’t decided what I’d like to do about it just yet.

My warm cheeked face and I are going to work on the furniture build today — potentially. Maybe. Possibly. Unlikely. Nearly fifteen hours of axe swinging has taken much of the fuss & fight out of me. I feel very calm. If a tad weary. Snacking the shit out of stuff for a couple hours every week can do that for you. Channel the pent up rage into an axe point and you too might find an inner calm. Ha!

That stated I had written a cumulative 50,000 words across all of my posts so far this year on my blog, which seems kind of incredible. That’s a particularly short novel worth of unfiltered brain rot mush from straight out of my head via the finger tips into my cell phone. Wild. And here I was thinking all I did all day was walk the dog, split wood, and doom scroll in between paid projects. I wonder if I’ll reach 80,000 words by years end? I don’t honestly know, but I can try.

I just thought that that was interesting, especially as I am within ten days of hitting a 900 day writing streak. I’ve already surpassed my old high score of 831, so that’s pretty cool to see too. Here I am over here being productive and shit. I washed more car windows, cleaned a carpet, did loads of laundry, added some tags to my tool box in the garage, and it’s only 3:30 pm on Friday afternoon. The weekend is my oyster ladies and gents. I’ll catch you around the water cooler on Monday.

I have about ten big rounds left of suitable wood in mound three of Wood Pile One left to split by hand and then I will be off behind the barn pretty much until the snow comes. It requires a fair bit of clean up before I can get into it. Weeds and long grasses need to be shorn down to the dirt to try and limit my exposure to ticks and spiders in amongst the jumbled mass of wood. Plus once I hit a road block of no more small enough rounds to split I can fire up the old chainsaws and set myself up with more. Those would likely have to wait until next fall to be split, but if this Super El Niño causes some real damage I might be out swinging an axe in December in long pants and a t-shirt much like the end of 2001. It was warmer in Nov/Dec that year than all of October. It was really weird.

No matter, it’s now Friday and I can add six hours for the week to my tally, which puts us up to 14.5 hours total for the month. Not too shabby.

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and while my ALP is descending back into the nominal/normal range, my MRI and ultrasound shows a fatty liver. So I need to lose weight, but slowly. Like a pound a week type thing, not a mad dash to drop 20 pounds in a month, because that can cause the liver to store even more fat, which is counterproductive. I do not want cirrhosis of the liver. Good thing I’m not much of a drinker. So it was some good news and some not so good news, nothing bad though. I’m actively trying to lose weight so it wasn’t a serious blow to my ego or anything like that, in fact it bolstered my resolve.

The axe swinging, and the rock climbing, and the brisk dog walking are all good things in my life. I need to correct my eating habits, portion sizes, and snacking. I’ve added more water into the mix these last couple years so that is helping me out too. I have been instructed to add more fibre to my diet in the form of those Metamucil gummies, but get this my gastroenterologist wants me to take 10 a day! 10. That’s insane. I’ve upped my intake from one a day to five, and we will see where this takes us. If that doesn’t cause any adverse unintended consequences then perhaps I’ll move over to the powdered drink mix, and use it towards my 6-8 glasses of water per day. That alone keeps me near a toilet due to the need to pee almost constantly. Yikes! Health. What a racket! Ha.

Next weekend is the fair and our butter sculpting competition. Should be a lot of fun! I do love fair time. Warm days, cool evenings, cold nights. Lots of friends and family around to see. I do tend to spend close to twenty four hours on the fair grounds over those four days which makes my feet ache, my back sore, and my hips want to leave my body entirely. But, in the end it’s all worth it. I pray for nice weather. Not too hot, not too cold, not too dry and not too wet either.

I’m calling it a day after one hour of splitting this morning. I need to be able to move and stretch when climbing tomorrow. Have a lovely weekend.

I have an important appointment mid day so I’ve had to shorten my usual habits just a hair. No matter. Still walked the dog, and got one hour of wood splitting in under my belt. I’ve returned home and made some edits to a client’s document that was just requested this morning, and soon I’ll hop in the shower because while I only split for an hour, these rounds in the mound are a whole lot tougher and meaner to get through. My split pile continues to grow! Bask in the glory that is my split wood piles!

So I’m up to 13.5 hours in Wood Pile One, having completed the stacked rows of mound one, and the freshly cut rounds of mound two, I am up to my elbows in heavier, thicker, more tenacious hard woods in mound three. I’d personally love to be done up here by October 2nd, so that I can clean up behind the barn and get moving down there. It’s a gigantic mess of weeds, tangles, branches, logs and bucked rounds waiting for some TLC. I will be very surprised if the back lot even looks like it’s been dented by the time November rolls around. There’s just so much there! I could work all winter and not finish it. There’s months of work. And more bucking with my chainsaws to do too.

It’s Thursday. No movement in the waistband not on the scales. I am however getting good at sweating my ass off! On a positive note my boots are comfy. The new laces are working out pretty well. The gel insoles are a nice touch too. Gotta take care of our feet!

Sharp eyed folks will see I missed three logs when bucking wood back in April/May, but I’m ok with that. I can use my saw to fix that I November.

Once I got the mound done I tried two test bits in mound three, and one gave way with work, but the second seems unyielding. Perhaps I’m tired after a full two hours of chopping, the most I have done in one session so far this season. Third week. Puts me up to 10.5 hrs in total. I’m both tired, hungry and thirsty. I’ve got one Gatorade zero with me, and a Clif Builders protein bar for a late breakfast after chopping. Lucky for me it’s only 9°C, so I’m not as sweaty as usual, though I can feel it on my face, and my hands/back.

Time to go home and release some art files!

Went looking for viable Fair entries on Sunday in the fields at the farm. Found a good number of eligible veggies for both kids. It was sunny and warm and the field was hard packed like concrete underfoot. Not ideal growing conditions. Things looked a bit sparse compared to other years. Oh well. Such is life.

Spent the morning at the Orthodontists office with my youngest. She needs work, nearly five grands worth to be precise. She inherited my mouth unfortunately for her. That means tears and mouth pain in her immediate future. Apologies.

Tell your kids to focus on eating and to do so in a timely manner and what do you get in return, kids watching YouTube shorts and ignoring their breakfast until the dog decides he’s waited long enough and sneaks in for a private munch of bacon right off the plate (which was on the couch and not the table I might add). Then complain loudly how the dog stole your breakfast and now you’re hungry. Wah-wah-wah! I’m not impressed with the dog breaking discipline like that, but I’m also not happy my kids ignored a hot breakfast to fuck about on their tablets and not eating when asked to do so. It grows tiresome, and bothersome. Never awesome.

Which, fair enough to say, but I’m not relying entirely on my shoulders and back for indoor rock climbing. No, I’ve progressed to trying to utilize my legs more and keeping a looser grip on the holds so that I don’t immediately fry my firearms and grip strength mere seconds after mounting the walls. Do I still try to brute force it on occasion? Yes — of course, I’m not that well versed in climbing culture and etiquette so I do make stupid mistakes all the time. Like having a death grip. Pulling only with my arms. Forgetting to shift my weight over a planted foot to maintain position in a controlled manner. Not reapplying chalk mid climb. All rookie/noob mistakes, I’ll freely admit it. Doesn’t mean I’m not having fun though!

It’s Saturday. We’re off to go climbing shortly. And now that I look at things more closely I will need to run the lawn mower over the front and back yards today. Going to work up an appetite for lunch!

Being more active is great. But not seeing any weight loss because of it sort of sucks. But I’ll stick with it to see if I can get any movement on the scales, in relation to my belt, and how my clothes fit. I think I need more than eight hours over two weeks of swinging an axe for 60-90 minutes each morning after a farm walk, and climbing two days a week to see any results. Going back to lifting weights would help but that’s another expense, and more time to be found in an increasingly dense schedule*.

*That’s for another post me thinks.