Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Luckily it didn’t take a stick of dynamite to get myself or my kids out of bed this morning in order to get ready for school. If anything we were about eight minutes earlier than usual. Rare, but not unheard of for us. We will see how tomorrow goes after all the extracurriculars start up again tonight. I don’t think our kids realize just how much we pay for them to do outside of school hours. You get a real sense of just how long a day is when both school and those extra things are all shut down for winter break. We fill a fair few hours every single day with fun stuff. Lucky us! If and when they have kids of their own they may just come to understand the lengths we’ve gone to to offer them a chance at just about anything they wanted to try.

I have my first big project for 2024 to start at 9:00am this morning. Glad to have the opportunity for success. I know the clients really liked last years, so I hope to meet and exceed expectations. Repeat customers are very welcome! I had a line on some paid woodworking but I’ve had to divert that to a friend whom works in the cabinetry business, as his work is slow, and I have this project I have to get done. Hopefully everyone gets what they need and we’re all the better for it.

I continue to wish folks a happy birthday as the prompts come up on Facebook. I don’t know if it means much to them to hear from me specifically, but I know how I feel when somebody takes time out of their day for me, and it’s pleasant. So I’ll keep that going for another year. I don’t get to everyone, but I think I hit a pretty good percentage of them. Takes 2 seconds and is no skin off my nose.

Two weeks have flown by. We are already eight days into the month. First semester at school is done once we cross into February. My baby, almost half way through grade one. Who’d a thunk it. Well now I’m just stalling. I need to go dig into the first report of 2024. And a happy monday in January to you all.

On package two of eight and we are already missing two integral pieces. I do not hold out much hope that things will get better, or that those missing pieces will miraculously be found among the other sachets of bits. You’d think after spending more than $120.00 on a sizable set that all of the parts would be there, but you’d be wrong. I wonder if they’d been getting complaints and that’s why it was on sale. It was still $120.00 plus tax, so not like I was picking through open boxes in a clearance bin. We had seven lego sets this Christmas, so hopefully they aren’t all like this submersible city set.

Sunday funday lazy last day before school starts up again. We know of one family currently battling Covid, so might be a great idea to mask up for the next couple weeks if you haven’t been doing so, with an N95 or better mask. And for those of us still masking, keep it up. Stay safe out there. I have to imagine that there are more families with sick kids just waiting to send those children off to school after having them home for 14 straight days. Or the school will be a Ghost town with so many missing sick kids. Hard to know at this point. I’ve read from some European doctors and whatnot that they believe Covid to be akin to an airborne aids, if you can believe that. A level 3 biohazard that depletes the immune response. Lots of acronyms, and talk of CD4, telomeres, long bits of technical jargon I don’t understand, along with charts, and diagrams. Sounds terrifying. But I dropped Chemistry and don’t pretend I understand the raw data. But the mention of “airborne aids” gives me cause to pause. I’d rather err on the side of caution than run that kind of risk for my kids and I.

We did get all of 2 cm of snow last night, so looks like winter now. The consistent minus eight and added windchill made that point a while ago. The lights still left up outside look much nicer in the snow covered trees. Looks as though I need to dig out my own snowpants and long johns in order to enjoy the winter weather. I’ve heard it told we are forecasted to get a significant dumping of snow this week. Maybe I’ll go out and get myself a snow blower after all. Save myself the physical stress of having to shovel so much. Well, four to five inches of light powdery snow is one thing, but sixteen inches of wet packing snow is entirely something else.

** don’t recall what came up to make me end this post so abruptly. Possibly the need to clean my eldest daughters room. Well… no. My spouse and daughter entertained the idea of a rearranged bedroom but failed to include how much time/effort was needed to clean it prior/during & after. Best to do that kind of thing with the kids gone. Otherwise you get tantrums over keeping broken guy bits, wrappers, and box scraps. You’d think they had nothing for how fiercely they cling to garbage. Very strange. Finding spent candy wrappers all over the place so I know we still have halloween candy caches in the house. So when the kids left I completed the once over cleaning, and then left it in a reasonable state. She, my eldest child, that is, needs to release her death grip on old unused broken toys to make room for her birthday presents and Christmas gifts. Can’t live life like a hoarder around here for long. Once it spills out into the hall or front room or basement, dear old dad will have a go at it. Ruthless I am. Urge to purge! Rising! Rising!

The last two days of winter break are upon us! Complete with dull gray overcast clouds, and a very cold breeze. From what I understand we are to get snow this week, and a whole lot of it too. Which is too late for a fun family outing for mid day tobogganing & hot chocolates. That might have to happen next weekend if the snow sticks around. That’s a pretty sizable IF from where I’m currently sitting. Would be nice to get some snow sooner so that we don’t keep getting it come April. By april we’re all ready for sun shine, warmth and light jackets when playing at the park.

Happy Saturday morning. Back to reality come Monday! No more sleeping in. Bah-Humbug! Have to once again turn my morning alarm back on. Awaken when it is dark out once again.

Ciao Bella!

Just when you thought you had become cold to the missing friend in your group good old Facebook is there to promptly remind you of their impending birthday. It’s a shame you didn’t make it to your next birthday, especially after your daughter died not 10 days after hers. A jumble of things to feel and think. Five months on and the untimely deaths still come to mind. I did not, until recently realize just how popular your hair cut was, and that style of glasses.  I seem to see them everywhere. Funny how that is. Reminds me of college where I died my hair this deep burgundy colour, and then everywhere I went I saw others with the same colour. Haven’t noticed it before or since. It’s like realizing your hands are expressive only once your kids put nail polish on during a “spa” day. They just be out there flipping and flapping and churning about as I talk. Distracting.

Five says in and I have the exterior lights off the eaves, the two wreaths off the garage, and various cords rolled up & off the ground. I took the tree down this morning with my oldest helping me. Went as smoothly as I expected. The tree is packed away safely for another year. Ornaments went into clear totes so I can see what’s inside. Floor has been swept and vacuumed up. The room feels ever so slightly bigger. More natural light now that the 7.5ft tree doesn’t block the window. Now to get rid off all the “saved” paper for crafting, and get the presents shipped off to the appropriate bedroom. I’m going to try and stop the migration of junk into the basement where it has to sit for 12-18 months before I can toss it, or sell it, or donate it to someone else for safe keeping.

Speaking of the basement, our house feels bigger now that we use the additional space more wisely. It’s bright, clean and somewhat organized now. It could always be refined more, but I’m happy to be able to be in the space and not feel anxious about the mess/clutter/dirt that had previously built up down here. Though winter is here, it hasn’t fallen upon us yet so the basement isn’t freezing cold yet. Still manageable. Nice!

I scratched a bad itch by cleaning up at the cottage with the use of fire. Got some much needed work done removing old junk, and freeing up space by the shop, and down around the firepit. I picked up seventy pounds worth of hangers, truss pin boards, nails, screws, and lag bolts with nuts and washers still attached. If all the lifting hadn’t aggravated my back I could have run that bon fire for seven days straight to clean up all the wood cut offs, mouldy trim, and whatever else is still hiding under the cover of brush & overgrowth. My farming extended family don’t work that way. They keep things long after needed, until it becomes a different kind of problem. Ha. Hoarders essentially. As a pack-rat myself I understand the reason and the desire to keep stuff “just in case”, but up to a point. And my point is miles, and miles behind where my wife’s families is. I urge to purge in order to clean up. The property is beautiful until you start to look too closely, and then you start to see all the things being kept, and you think, oh this would be really great if all that were gone. But I digress. I’m no farmer. I’m no conservative. I don’t believe in the bootstraps myth. Those physics don’t physics, know what I mean?

Anyway, happy Friday, much goes back to status quo on Monday at 9:00am, so breathe a sigh of relief, and welcome to 2024. Ciao Bella!

I did have the chance to look over my year in review thanks to WordPress. I wrote 390 posts over the last year, and didn’t do too shabby in the word count either. Not the 200,000 of my most successful year ever, but not a sorry state of affairs either. Nice!

Now we look forward into the new year, and I still have to take down the tree, and potentially the outside lights too. Though, January can be pretty blah, so maybe a few lights would be welcome? Depends on the weather and my coming schedule.

All the best.

I know I’ve written more than 1,000 posts here on this blog in the last several years, 750 of them in one long block in fact. But, I am always amazed at what a random selection get traction way after the fact. I don’t know if there are bot swarms that get flagged to certain posts once it reaches a certain threshold for likes or views, but every so often a couple will take off and those counters wind up by a hundred or so over night. Rather odd if you ask me. I can’t control it, nor harness it to wield ad dollars so I typically don’t much care about it.

I also don’t recognize some posts because I have written so many, I can’t keep track. Not saying I’m bipolar or schizophrenic but… I don’t recall putting pen to paper for some of these posts from years ago. Even once I read them they don’t ring any bells. I write posts like I write tests & exams I guess, get it all out and then promptly forget all about it.

Today is my dad’s 75th birthday. It is Wednesday January 3rd, 2024. Yesterday was my wife’s grandmother’s birthday and she turned 96. Wow. What an age to reach. It’s a terrible shame that the Covid she caught accelerated her dementia to the point of requiring round the clock care at an LTC. Fire cracker of a woman.

The winter break is winding down, and soon I’ll need to take the tree down, and also take down some of the exterior lights too. Oh that’s going to be cold! Yuck. Have a great day. Ciao Bella!

Though she waits inside the Parkview LTC in Whitchurch-Stouffville slowly succumbing to dementia, some days when she is lucid and pain free you can tell what an extraordinary life she has led. From pet bears, bookie murder/suicides, forest fires up in the Sault Ste. Marie where they paddled their belonging out on a canoe into the centre of the lake to weather the fire storm as a family, and an education in a train car, to nursing at U of T, and farming as a part of the Reesor clan in Markham. The woman has done lots and deserves a well cared for rest. Happy 96th Birthday.

It gets addictive. Old mouldy floor boards, trim, tongue & groove pine wainscoting, ash logs, bed frames and whatever else needed to go. A couple rotten roof trusses even made it into the mix. Once I got the fire really going, and there was a healthy bed of coals we were able to incinerate just about anything. I had the fire running for two days straight. Several busted up pallets got sent to their doom in the fire pit too. I went scouring through the trees for downed limbs, and brush to clear the ground around the fire pit. It’s a shame the leaves are so water logged as we could have lit up the heavens by burning those too. Whoosh! As it was much of the burnable stuff was wet and/or damp and pretty smoky. Glad we don’t have particularly close neighbours. November and December are great months for long burns as there are no bugs to contend with.

If I had my way we’d have made it a full blaze and cleared up ALL of the cut off wood bits, and building junk on the property, but as it was I cleaned up the burn pit pretty well myself by rolling various logs into the flames and coals for a long slow burn. I should take a shovel over there to flatten out the ash/sand pile so that you can stack piles in the centre once again. Right now the centre is a massive mound of old ash, sand and soil. It stands about four feet high, and probably 10 or twelve feet wide in diameter. Not that I want to shovel all that by hand, but it should get knocked down at some point. Preferably when there are no bugs down in that low rock lined pit by the tree line. Come summer it gets brutal down there for all kinds of creepy crawlers.

It is Sunday December 31st, 2023. Last day of the current year. No big plans to do much of anything today. Except laundry. Always have to do laundry. Can never escape it. I imagine we will find some fireworks to watch on tv from the comfort of our own home. No walking, no driving, or finding parking spots in a crowded lot loaded with children. Tantrums and rain, delays and late starts, aching legs, and sore feet. We’ll give all that a miss this year.

No resolutions for the coming year. Other than I intend to make exercise a stronger personal habit and a part of every week. I haven’t thought much about doing a new reading challenge this coming year. I think I’ll read whatever takes my fancy as I find it. No pressure to read a set number. I’d like to find the time to sculpt more, and/or do some wood working. I was working on a pine bed, so I didn’t totally slack off in the shop this year!

Well, the 24 hour burn, became a 48 hour burn, is now close to a 72 hour burn. Roof trusses, old beds, and all manner of other junk was fed into the belly of the beast. It ain’t pretty, but she sure is a roaster. Burned a hole in my coat while I was at it.