Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Not going to lie, I love this time of year. Perhaps not spending hours doing leaves, but I like the crisp air, sunshine, and lack of stinging, biting bugs. We put our original set up out yesterday, the kids and I. Today I picked up a couple more cheap inflatables, and two sizes of skeleton. One full size glow in the dark fella, and a three footer to hang on the front door. It’s all very festive looking now. I sorted out the chords so I can get seven inflatables running, and one light up pumpkin. The kids want to do bloody hand prints on the doors, and windows again. So I need to dig out the red acrylic paint. I do hope they keep their expressionist designs to the glass, and not on the brick work like last year! Still scrapping tiny red hand prints off the front entrance. Very in season right now though.

I know that in previous years I managed to hit twenty, and twenty four plus hours logged walking around the fair, but this year I am happy to stop my joyous experience at a mere eighteen hours. My main concern is leaving the dog at home alone unattended for another stretch of hours. He hasn’t been very happy about our collective absences, so I’m happy to sit out most of day four to keep him company. I wish my step counter had of worked, as I think we would have covered 20,000- 30,000 steps each day, and easily more than that over the 9 hours spent walking the midway on saturday alone. My heels, ankles, hips and lower back can all attest to the much heightened uptick in bodily movement for the last three days. So much concrete, gravel, and asphalt to stand on, and walk around on. So, so much of it. Very unforgiving.

The dust plume that you can see hanging over the fair grounds is both a good sign that lots of people are attending, and a bad sign for both sneezing, and dry eyes the very next day. A tiny bit of drizzle each day keeps it to a minimum usually, but we had spectacular weather this year – again, with little to no rain, and not too intense heat, so the grounds were optimal for the high volumes of people. Bugs were minimal thanks to the very cool nights, which is a plus. Last year was so very hot the wasps were out in full force, not so this year. Thankfully.

I missed the horse pull, but we did catch the various categories of tractor pulls, and we saw some of the demolition derby through the heavy crowds. My eldest daughter and I saw all three nights of fireworks in a row too! The last was from the car on the drive home. We pulled off the road to watch it with music playing in the warmth of the vehicle.

Today is lazy Sunday. The kids want to start decorating for Halloween. I’d like to but I’m kind of tired right now. My hips ache. But, I will say this; setting them up is somewhat easier than taking them down because they are all ready dry, and I have all the pieces sorted in each box. I want to walk the dog first though. So maybe I should go do that now, and start earlier. Ciao Bella!

Blurb. Short but sweet, like plum sauce on a freshly deep fried chicky tendy. Sweet like a frosty mug of cold iced tea. Short like a… well. Let’s just say short shall we, and leave it at that. Blurb.

I slightly surpassed last years fourth place with a 3rd place finish for my Ogre Guard hand painted & sculpted ceramic bust. Well done me. Love to see it. Being the only item I entered I am glad it placed at all! Podium for me. Bronze! Glad I got something. Ha.

The kids are in bed asleep still, and it is almost nine. I wanted them to go to school because I thought we’d be home by 9pm. But never gonna stop grandpa kept us out until after 10pm, so when we finally got home, changed, hair brushed, teeth cleaned, and squared away it was nearly eleven o’clock. Let us just say that their wake up was atrocious, and full of tears, and all out crying. So back to bed for another 2-3 hours. No tablets today. Hand writing, maths, reading are the order of the day. Plus we need to heavily exercise the dog as he missed out on walks with us gone. I need to rake leaves, and cut the grass too. I have paid work on the docket, so I need to work around the day job. Should be a jam packed day ahead.

Been a morning already hasn’t it? Big farm walk in the cool autumn air, wet grass soaking through my inappropriate footware (for such an occasion), and the dog took off like a shot to chase every single four legged creature making a home upon the property. Good. Glad he is tired. I’ve fed him his breakfast, Nd now I can focus on doing my own things now.

Also the adoption agency emailed us to say his neutering appointment should be this month, and not December as we once thought. So that should be a fun few days for dear old Graham. I’ll need to find home a cone to wear to stop him worrying his new found wound(s). To both his anatomy, and his ego! Ha. We’ll likely have matching scares old Grimbo and I. It’s a big part of the adoption agreement that he gets fixed, so we’ve already paid for the surgery. Best of all it gets done in Vaughan and not Barrie, so much closer to home for us! Yeah. Nice.

If I’m correct today is Thursday. The 2024 Markham Fair opens today! The kids and the whole extended family are very excited. Let us see how we feel come 5:00pm Sunday October 6th when it’s all over the another year. Tired aching feet, full bellies, new ride memories, visits with friends from far away, late nights, and cool evening fireworks displays. So much happens in just four days. It’s a whirlwind of activity. I’m pumped.

I could have done with this ear infection clearing up, but it shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance. I’m already hearing impaired so it’s just another few notches worse at the moment. Nothing insurmountable. I really should get on with learning my ASL. It might become a requirement as I age, and my hearing gets worse. I will put a pin in that, to focus on more after the fair is over. Must be a book/course I could find near by that I can pick away at. Learning to lip read might come in handy too. Skills, skills, skills! Gotta have them all.

I see one small task I want to complete right this second while I remember, so I’ll sign off before I forget it – again. Ciao Bella.

Which is what it feels like with this interminable ear infection. Started in one ear now we’re here. With two, no less! Everybody sounds like they are fifty feet away, or mumbling through a wall. It’s very peaceful. Except for my pulse pounding in my ear. That’s quite loud. Also, strangely enough the sound of brushing my teeth was extraordinarily loud these last few days. So… yeah. How are you all doing?

I started another painting recently for my youngest this time, and it has gone pear shaped so I’ve lost interest, and the motivation to continue. I will go back, I just don’t know when. I had high hopes, and dashed those hopes upon my poor technical skills after years of neglect. I can try to resurrect it without a doubt. I had wanted it to go smoothly, and turn out as I had planned. And not be yet another salvage job. But for that to happen I need to paint/draw regularly and that isn’t happening, atleast not right now.

Today begins the judging portion of the Markham Fair. I do not hold out high expectations for my sculpted & painted bust, but you never know. I just like having something at the fair. I don’t ever see people looking at my art, so it certainly isn’t an ego boost, or a dopamine thing. I was proud of it and felt like sharing. Bully for me! There are some very, very talented folks in the area whom show incredible paintings, drawings, quilts and such. Hard to judge a jar of jam from afar, but you can tell the quality of a charcoal sketch from 20 paces.

I am kicking myself for not producing anything brand new for this year, but it’s been an odd few months. I was sick almost all of September with a cough, and this ear infection stole my last second panicked productivity session. My fault. Procrastination at its worst. Glad I had one or two figures in the wings waiting though. Life saver that was! When the feeling hits, I build in bulk. And I’m glad for it. One massive months long session could set me up for several years worth of entries. A real boon on the years where I can’t be bothered to do much of anything other than work, or home DIY projects.

I will say that Diably IV didn’t help me out any, time wise. I’ve put a number of hours into that game that likely should have gone towards a new fair entry. I could play while coughing, I couldn’t do delicate detail work in the same state. That’s what I’m telling myself after the fact anyway.

So it’s Wednesday, Hump Day, Middle of the Week Day, and that means the weekend approaches at speed. The fair will officially open tomorrow for visitors, and it will be a whirlwind of activity and emotions. I look forward to the food the most. An occasional ride here or there. Fireworks and neon lights, music and laughter. There’s a whole lot going on that you can find just about anything you’d like to see. Musicians, dancers, acrobats, fiddlers, and comedians. Beer, burgers, burritos and glass bongs. Quilts, sweaters, blankets, hats and mitts. Exotic food trucks, farm animals, instructional seminars, and performing animal shows. Demolition derby, tractor pulls, and horse teams of every stripe. I warn you now, wear good comfortable walking shoes. I hesitate to wonder what our step counters will read after multiple 8-10 hour sessions walking around showing things to friends. But, with the new dog at home those types of hours might be a thing of the past. Just saying.

If you like Robert Bateman prints there is always a booth selling those massive things in one of the commerce buildings. You can find it by walking passed the candy apple people! Candy apples, candy corn, bulk candy, candy, candy, candy. Tiny Tom’s donuts for an arm and a leg if you so wish. Hard to say no to that. Do you like baby rabbits,  chicks, geese, and calves? Piglets and tiny little lambs? You can find it all at Jurassic Park! Erm… The Markham Fair.

Is the most stressful part of the fair experience, the flowers on the way there, and getting the important stuff to bring home at the end. Both times stress me out a bunch. Jot a fan of moving flowers in vases with water. All that clinking, and clanking around. We never seem to have tall enough narrow boxes to move them around safely so they won’t fall over, knock each other, or smash & drain out entirely. I personally hate it.

Now I have to do it twice. The hours for drop off changed, which I wasn’t aware of. Every single year I drop my stuff off in the mornings around 10-11AM, and it goes just fine. Today I have to go back for noon. I left the flowers on the receiving table in the appropriate section as I refuse to do that drive again wish flippy floppy flowers in the car. Once per year is enough.

I still have thirty or so things to go back there for noon though. Then it’ll be crowded, and I’ll feel rushed, and the spots will all be full, or somebody will block me in and I’ll run the disk of missing school pick up. It’s a fucking nightmare. Why change the hours? It’s not like they will stay open later, it’s run by geriatrics that probably had breakfast a 4am, and want dinner by 3pm. It’s insane.

Happy Tuesday to you all.

Hey man it’s Monday, and you know what that means! New illnesses for the week. This go around it isn’t a twenty four day long cough, but an ear infection that is affecting my jaw muscles too! Yeah boy. I should be thankful that we have (at least monentarily) moved beyond the inner ear pressure build up stage, and are into the constantly weeping ear goo stage. Neither is much fun. Wet ears feel weird. Wet ear goo that leaks out every 2-3 minutes is even weirder. Something I could do without. So that was a massive chunk of my sunday spent gobbling down pain killers whilst the pressure behind my ear drums built up, and now it is releasing – constantly. Went to an outdoor party saturday night, woke up at 4:00am sunday morning with intense inner ear pain, and a painful jaw. The pain killers are affecting my innards too. So that’s a fun twist on current events.

Party was fun. Lots of children there. My kids had a great deal of fun. Listened to live music, danced, ran around, made crafts, built a little house from corn stalks, rolled about on the grass, ate too much candy, and finally crashed around 10pm that night. It was a blast. I do wish we had driven ourselves so that we didn’t have to wait on others. But that’s an entirely different rant, which I’m not in the mood for.

Today is to be spent looking over our fair entries to make sure everything is where it should be. Double checking that glued on pieces have remained stuck in place, or fixing missing bits and bobs. Shouldn’t take to long this year as we aren’t trying to enter every single category imaginable like they’ve done in previous years. One, maybe two boxes of things to take over tomorrow should just about do it. Last year it took me five or six trips back and forth to the car to take all of their stuff in. It was kinda crazy. Too much. What’s worse is trying to sort out what’s ours on pick-up night the next sunday. That’s absolute mayhem. Pure madness. Should be less so for us this year. As for myself I am only entering one item, a painted sculpture. That suits me just fine. One item which I put a lot of time, and effort into to showcase my various hobbies.

Every year I think I should enter this, or that, or the other, but when the time comes I’m just not interested in making those things. I like what I like. I build only what I like. I’m not much moved by whether or not others like it too. I’d be pleased as punch if people liked it, but I’m not doing it for them. If I’m happy with the results, then I’m happy. Go me!

Wet drippy inner ears is an odd sensation. Not one I’m really comfortable with. It’s a warm, wet tickle. Very strange indeed. Better than the pressure build up stage, by far. I would like this to end at some point prior to the fair kick off night for volunteers. I don’t fancy feeling as though my heads three feet under water the whole time. Sounds are muffled, and feel far away. For myself (all ready being hearing impaired) this additional barrier to sound/hearing really sucks. No phone calls today! Text or e-mails only.

By a rather unpleasant ear infection/sore jaw combo pain. Didn’t really know what to make of it so I put drops in that ear, and took pain killers and went back to sleep. Not much I can do on a Sunday morning. I can’t hear much of anything at the moment, so it was a perfect time to vacuum the shop. Get as much of that pesky saw dust as I can. Make it less of a choking hazard to hang out inside the garage shop. Not that I have anything on the go right this second. I checked our tire pressure first because I’d need to run the compressor, which would also allow me to blow off hard to reach areas of the shop. Would be great to have a heavy duty extraction fan for this type of chore. Or use a leaf blower. Though, blowing all that dust up the street would likely not be appreciated by my neighbours. Powdered donut cars aren’t a look they are going for. These people spend money on their grass, so a dirty vehicle isn’t a way into their hearts. Ha. Anyway, done now.

I do sometimes think of getting some dust collection installed beyond my shop vac, but if I’m not also going to install hard tubing across the shop to funnel the dust to the collection unit, it’s not really worth it. The ribbed flex tube cuts the CFM down by a huge percentage, and I’m not in a place to add hard duct lines in, nor blast gates, not an air cleaner either. I’d prefer heating/cooling & insulation so I could work all year round comfortably. That or a flat pock-mark less floor so my wheels don’t catch every few inches when I want to wheel tools around. Those would be my first go to fixes if I had money just lying around.

Speaking of wheels and tools I got around to adding the workbenches wheels yesterday. So handy! Now I have an additional item I can move about freely. I could have moved a bunch of stuff out of the shop to clean, but that slipped my mind until just now. The wheeled workbench was such a new addition to the shop infrastructure it didn’t even cross my mind! Ha. Oh well. The thing is, I got it done, and that’s what is important. Let us focus on the positives here.

The house is the cleanest it has been in a long time. The Markham Fair starts this coming week, so we’re about to make a crafting mess on all the surfaces I spent last month washing and keeping tidy. Then it’ll be Thanksgiving, which will likely involve travel of some sort. And then Halloween kicks in which requires more crafting, decorations, and the installation of several inflatables on the front lawn. I actually love Halloween a great deal. I just wish the lawn was finished before I have to decorate it. Leaves get into everything! Blocking the fans from being able to draw enough air in. It’s a battle to keep everything in working order. But it looks cool, and adds to the holiday spirit. Makes my kids happy to see it all too.

Waiting on my second set of pain killers to kick in so that my jaw stops hurting, and my ear aches a bit less. Not the optimal way to enjoy a lazy Sunday, but eh? What you going to do about it.

Our friends rescue dog from california got skunked last night. First time in the year that they’ve had him. Full throated adult skunk sprayed point blank range right into the barking dogs mouth. Yuck! It smelled so strong from the street, like a mound of burning plastic. Just awful. Luckily we had just gone through this recently so we had supplies on hand, and an action plan. Hydrogen peroxide and baking soda for a fizzy reactive slurry, and Nature’s Miracle skunk off soap to round off the edges, and clean any hard surfaces that might get touched.

I said to put the dog on a leash so he won’t run into the house. Put an old towel over the dog. Carry him into an unused secondary tub/shower so that nothing gets touched (floors, carpets, dry wall, couches etc…) that will pick up and hold the stink. Place pet directly into the shower. Rinse them down completely. Add 250ml baking soda to copious amounts of hydrogen peroxide until it fizzes. Slather onto affected parts of the dog. Reapply/wash, reapply/wash. Use every ounce of slurry, and do everything except the eyes, mouth, and inner ears. Then move on to the gentler Nature’s Miracle shampoos and cleaning sprays to wash the dog some more, and spot clean any places the as of yet unclean dog had come into contact with. Tub, walls, tile on the bathroom floor etc… then wash the towel with the skunk off shampoo rubbed in real good immediately after all that bathing. Should – hopefully be good enough to sleep / exist indoors without irritating your eyes, nose, lungs with that burning plastic biological stink from the skunk. It’s about 90 minutes worth of concerted effort, but it pays off.

We were happy to help. It happened late in the evening to us too, but I had to send my wife out to criss cross town looking for what we needed. I didn’t have a friend to call to supply drop us everything we would need. Or give us a battle plan that would eliminate secondary contamination from direct contact by the dog. If I recall I was so put out by the spraying I hopped into the shower to start cleaning my dog and I still had my phone in my pocket. It spent the night in a bowl of instant rice, and was luckily serviceable by the following morning. Since we didn’t have supplies on hand, and I had to do something I washed the dog with head and shoulders ten times while I waited for the real chemicals to arrive. It was stressful.

But now it is Saturday, and the first PA Day passed without incident (for us anyway). We walked the dog at the farm. Had lunch & a swim at grandmas. Walked the dog again. Watched Inside Out 2. Walked the dog once more. My wife came home and the school day was done, so we went to dinner and another swim. I took down one old swing, and disassembled the slack line out front. Soon I’ll have to take down the second platform swing, the Noma lights, garden decorations, hose, and patio furniture, and gear up for winter time & snow. I’m glad I cut the grass the other day. The growing season is a little stunted this September. Usually now is the time the lawn takes off again after a dry June-August. Not so this year. Wettest summer ever for amount of precipitation, intermingled with really dry periods. Lawn never died or stopped growing. I even made special trips back here just to cut the grass before it was a foot tall! Crazy town. Now it’s acting like a lawn should in mid June.

I had thought I might need to rake leaves, but the mulcher on my new lawn mower made short work of them all. I don’t see that as an actual option once more than 5-10% of the leaves come down. It’s fine for a modest sprinkling of leaves, but not when those tree tops dump every last leaf. Have a great pre Markham Fair weekend. It’s photography drop off day today, so get your entries mounted, labeled, and dropped off to the fair grounds!