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My arms are fried, and my trigger finger is acting up after a couple hours of sweeping motions, side to side, to knock down the waist high grasses, and weeds. Thankfully I had some ear phone on hand as the older Echo machine is loud AF. I’ll lose my hearing how I want to, at a concert, not from household lawn machinery, thank you very much!

The passing of uncle Fred in Feb has left a few items uncared for. Thus here I am, getting around to it now. Both May & June were too busy to help, so now that it is officially summer break, I can pitch in. Hence the sore arms from waving around the line trimmer across several portions of grass.

Found a sink hole near the shop on my travels too. Opening is roughly 6″ in diameter,  but the hole itself is likely 10-12″ in diameter,  and at least 24″ deep. The sand and fill is washing away somewhere, but I can’t locate where. No lower lying plots look disturbed or bulged. So maybe we fill it with rocks and gravel, and a lot less sand. Mark it off, and keep an eye on it. Oh, don’t park your truck or tractors there either. As it could develop over time into a real nasty hazard.

Now that I am covered in grimy wet weed chaff, mud, and sand, I feel as though I’d like to step into the creek, or a pool to get a bit cleaner. The only thing stopping me here are the nasty blood sucking bugs near the waters edge. They got my legs while working in the ditches, and I’m done with that, for now. I’ll go inside to the AC, and will just rinse off in the laundry room sink. Not as glamorous, but still effective.

Now I wish I had of brought my burnable stuff down here. If only to get it out of my way in the garage. I have a table to refinish, and new walnut legs to build to make it all the more stable. Then I’ll chuck it in the basement, so that we have more playable surface area for Lego, and board games alike. The tiny white folding table can remain in use too, if it has to. Might be a September project, once everyone is back to regular schedules.

We are scheduled to meet a potential new member of the family. A 6 month old German shepherd named Graham. I think we do a meet and greet on Wednesday or Friday, and if he’s ok with us, we’ll bring the lil man home for good. Which means I need to register him with the town. Get him in to the vet’s office for heartworm pills, and get him an appropriate collar/name tag/ ID. Oh, and go buy food and such for a dog. We got rid of the old stuff’s our former dog has been dead & buried for more than three years now.

It’s Thursday now, and a pretty major US holiday, so I’ll bid you fare thee well.

I dug deep into our secondary pantry and found (8) eight full unopened boxes of Ritz bits crackers from 2021 & 2022. From the pandemic lock-in days. We never did get so bad as to need to eat them anyway. That was when you could buy four boxes for $8.00 CND. Can’t do that now. The oil and cheese had gone off, because of course they had. But, on the plus side I can now see all the way to the back of our lower cabinets in that section of the kitchen. I reorganized a few things while I was at it. Sad to see so much food go to waste, but it’s inedible, and thus not donation worthy. I think even the squirrels and raccoons would give it a miss.

So that’s the fridge, pantry, and secondary pantry sorted. I took yesterday’s garbage take away to finally throw away some busted/broken water bottles, themed cups, and various opened and messy kinetic sand bags. Plus very old halloween goody bags, and some Wendy’s toys. It wasn’t a lot, but I made the most of it while the family was out & occupied elsewhere. That is Covert Purge Ops 101. And no, I don’t feel bad. Nothing I tossed has been looked at, asked for, utilized, or thought of since it entered the house and got “stored” way up high where nobody ever looks for things – ever. So on that note, we’re golden.

We have a meet & greet with a potential new rescue pet today. The wee man is located in Barrie so rather than do all that driving for a site visit, the foster people will get a virtual tour via WhatsApp. So I’m told. Hopefully it all works out for what is best.

Happy Wednesday everybody.

Not that I don’t like having a clean(ish) house most of the time, but I find we don’t rotate through our canned goods particularly well. I buy some almost every time I grocery shop, but some cans are getting pushed to the back and forgotten about. Why just now I had to dispose of 3 cans of chicken noodle soup, 3 mushroom soups, 1 pea soup, 1 tomato soup, 1 celery soup, 1 potatoes and sausage soup, 1 can of cranberry sauce from 2016 (I might add!) And a few other items like rancid chips & popcorn where the oils had gone off. Spoiled cinnamon goldfish crackers that were both too crunchy & too soft in one unsettling combination of unpleasantness. Far easier to do these types of things with my spouse and children out of the house. Same with disposing of ruined coats, and ruined sneakers. The less than can see and thus pine sentimentally over these lost items, the better. Why keep ruined shoes? We aren’t cobblers. We can’t mend mesh wore running shoes where the soles are also worn through! Looks like the great purge of 2024 will have to happen in September once all parties are busy between the hours of 8:30am and 3:00pm.

But I digress, as I was talking about the pantry. Not that I like to see good food go to waste, but if we can’t eat it, no point in keeping it. I can move fresh items from under the counter to up into the pantry at eye level. Way better there! I have random cereal bags, and crackers to move too. Best get nibbling before that goes off and become bird food, or totally inedible for anyone, or any “thing”. Ugh. Sour oil smells so, so bad. Rancid is a great term for it. Clings to the nostrils. Lingers on everything. Blargh!

The blue bin & sink are taking a beating today. Lots of cleaned up cans in the recycling today. Cardboard boxes, tissue papers, and everything else I can reasonably get out of here, absolutely has to go! Go on now, get! So much wet food to clean up too. Yuck. Cold, slimy, smelly old wet food stuffs. Reminds me of working in all of the kitchens underneath the universities residences. Climbing into massive kettles to scrape out the left over bits from boiled bones, and over cooked soups. Scraping the grill tops, and washing the grease traps. Those are smells you don’t soon forget. Do not miss those days at all. But! It did give me the mindless paid work where I could talk/think my way through any papers I had to write, before I ever had the chance to sit down and type anything. Got harder as the essays got longer, but for first and second year classes it was a doable exercise in mental gymnastics. Pays to be an over thinker some times.

Anywho. It is Tuesday July second of twenty twenty four. Our holiday was yesterday, and I’m sure the US will occupy the 3rd/4th/5th to their advantage by closing down to celebrate. Losing fingers and hands heavily on one particular day per year at a time.

Take care out there. Ciao Bella.

Hard to get the kids to bed when everyone and their neighbours are firing the bright and crispies off at all hours of the evening and well up to eleven pm, or later. Had to go around and shut all of the windows to limit the sound intensity inside the kids bedrooms. Not that we don’t love fireworks, because we do. But the town does it up really well, for free, and puts on a hell of a show, with professional “Big Kid” explosives, so why,? oh why? Do people play around with so many of the dinky dink ones themselves. Glad we haven’t replaced out pet dog yet, as I’m sure adding another fireworks hating dog into the mix would have made the last few nights intolerable.

Such as it is, the big flash event is tonight. I do hope the food trucks make an extended presence so that I can nibble while I watch in awe this evening.

Anywho. It’s monday, so I should do some laundry and grocery shopping, or find something to do this holiday Monday. Can always pull weeds/rocks at the farm if I want to kill an hour or three.

We are all set to keep this a fairly quiet one today, as we’ve had far too much prolonged excitement every weekend, and most days throughout May & June. So, with that in mind my youngest has chosen to build her Lego set(s). I commend her for this decision, provided she doesn’t try to build all of them, back to back to back. I mean that if SHE can build them, go hack to back, but if I need to sit on the floor (yes she is still at the age where she is more comfortable on the floor and not seated at a table) then for the love of cheese don’t ask me to spend all day sat cross legged, my feet will go numb and I’ll not be able to walk for a few days in a row. If I could convince her to build on the coffee table atleast, a compromise! I would be more inclined to help out for longer stretches. Truth be told she got through 90% of the first two and only needed my help to pull a few stuck pieces apart, or to help with piece orientation. I do have the same gripe again about missing pieces, and poor QC by Lego. For what these Mine Craft kits cost, multiple missing bits where we had to pillage our own supply of loose bricks to complete is a god damned joke. Not cool. The sheen is wearing off on a number of brands lately around here.

Did I ever tell you about the Disney Star Wars merch I bought for myself and my daughter, where the seams across the back of my rebel t-shirt disintegrated after one wear, and two washes. The stitching on the front patches has come off too. A $50.00 USD shirt, ruined in a matter of days from two washes! Two. And I only wore it once, and that was to bed at the hotel. The next time I tried it on after doing the laundry upon our return home and the back 8 to 10 inches was hanging open. Gah! Not impressed.

Anyway, Friday is here. The weather for now is lovely, sunny, and a bit cooler. Should I cut the grass or tackle some garden bed weeding? Yup, I should. Will I? Who knows!

Now leaving grades one and four. Yikes. Where did all the time go? Fighting over homework most likely. Ha. Now we turn our eyes towards summer time, and having a bit of fun while the weather is nice. We have all ready begun the evening swim portion of the summer, and before too much longer we will be adding a midday swim, park/farm run, weeding the gardens, and collecting rototiller killing rocks from the farm fields. I’d like to add in some daily reading, and math, and the occasional written sentence/paragraph into the mix. A boy can dream.

We have a picnic scheduled at the largest park in town with many other families from the school, so that’s a really nice way to kick off the start of summer break. I’m not certain of what our schedule is for the break. I know the girls have swimming lessons in August, and we have a family photo shoot in mid July, and some plans to visit Ottawa for a comedy festival (potentially). Otherwise I will be looking for activities, and experiences for the kids to try this summer. I plan to purchase fewer physical things, and do more experiences to make memories.

Otherwise it is Thursday June 27th, 2024. The last ninety minutes of the school year are counting down. All of the kids homework came home yesterday, we just need indoor shoes, and backpacks, and lunch boxes, and the water bottles which have seen better days. I’ll need to sort & clean all of that prior to putting them away for nine weeks. You never know what alien puddle will grow if you forget to search & clean the lunch boxes before storing them away. Though, I suppose if your kids do day camps and such, you would continue to use those items and not get left with a foul smelling surprise over the labour day long weekend.

Usually the kids are home with us 24/7 for the summer holidays. My wife is a teacher, and is off too. I work from home, and I’m not all that busy this year. Last year was the fluke. So busy. But if we need to we can put them in camp for the last week of August when my wife returns to work for the first time in 14 months. They’re ok at home with me, but if it’s been a tough 8 weeks prior, you can bet your sweet caboose that we will mull over a last single week at camp for the two of them. I’d rather spend that on an iFly excursion, or a movie date, or laser tag, or go karts, or day glow mini putt in an air conditioned building. We have the Zoo and Wonderland near by, a pool, a farm, grandmas house, bike riding paths, a hockey net, basket balls, volley balls, cones, swings, a slack line, and various local parks. Not to mention books and grade school curriculum work sheets. Crafting supplies out the wazoo. We should be able to keep things moving.

That’s all folks. Have a Safe and Happy summer. May we all make it back together in September.

And boy are my arms tired. Family reunions, birthday parties, anniversaries, field trips, last week of school, recitals, on and on it goes. Woah! The last two months have been a blur, a flurry of activity even. Soon it will all peter out, and we can calmly do nothing for a day. Well, maybe we can all do some gardening here because our flower beds need some attention.

Yesterday’s birthday party went off without a hitch. The weather only sort of imposed itself upon us a few times. No electrical storms so we could all swim and be outdoors. Lots of smiling faces. Glad the 7th birthday party was good for all involved. I need a break from watching young kids swim, and try to drown themselves in the pool. My stress levels were high! So high. So gods be damned high. I’d have put them all in life jackets if I could have. Save myself some residual chest pains, and adrenaline dumps in the evening come down session.

Today is our fourteenth wedding anniversary. Seems like only yesterday we were gearing up in the rain to saunter down the aisle. I cried. I was pretty happy that day. My mum turned up orange from the skin bronzer cream she was using liberally. It made me chuckle. Lots of friends and family came. We danced the night away after a terrific meal. We swam in the inlaws pool until four forty five am. It was really something special.

Now we have two lovely kids. Very sensitive, talkative, active kids doing their own thing. Love it. Not a fan of the fighting, but that’s a thing kids do. Try to be more constructive about talking things out, but eh! What are you gonna do. Stay calm, and try not to add fuel to the fire. That’s my goal. Don’t react in a harmful manner. Chill! Breathe. Relax. This too shall pass.

Tomorrow is the last day of school for my grade four, and grade one aged kids. Kids are getting older (luckily). We had a sad/somber summer last year losing a small friend to an ATV accident. Let us not lose any other friends, or family to tragedy this year, please & thank you.

Have a glorious Wednesday. All the best to you. Ciao Bella.

I feel bad for those whom placed long shot bets early on for Edmonton in seven games. I bet their eyes were rolling with the potential payoff, until Edmonton fizzled in the 7th. So long, and thanks for all the fish. At least it was a high intensity game. I had to get on my feet and pace about the patio during the final three minutes. I had to turn it off once the last second counted down. I wasn’t so much mad, as I was disappointed.

Today will be spent prepping for a birthday party. I have a cake in the oven already. I have spent a few moments this morning gathering plates, utensils, table cover, and craft materials incase the weather turns worse than just heavy rain. We can always pop on a movie if we absolutely have to. We’ve got options.

We have been plagued by rotten weather the last five or six days. Either way too hot, heavy rain, thunder storms, or extremely high winds. It interfered with our plans every single day, between Thursday and Sunday, plus today. What can you do though eh? Provide options and suitable alternatives and don’t get your hopes set on any one thing. As good as we can get at this point.

That’s all I have for right now. Ciao Bella!