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It has the potential to clear a room immediately. Tooth paste and bowel movement. Fresh as the day is long. Long lasting. Catches in your sinuses and hangs in the back of your throat. Like going ninth man in on a port o potty on a July day, with a handful of breathmints in your mouth.

Which means that at some point in mid November we will get to see whether or not our kids smiled in a reasonable fashion for their class photos. Gotta love the gamble. Will it be sweet, sinister, laughable, cringe worthy? Who knows? I certainly don’t. And it will be a long while yet before we find out one way or the other. That’s part of the fun! I should start a betting app based on the best/worst case scenario for children’s pictures, open only to parents of school aged children, in your friend group. Like a football pool, but you’re all betting on good/bad/hilarious photos being taken. Spend hours on your kids hair for them to wear a toque and not check before sitting down? Make a wager! Did your child eat bright orange soup messily before the snap? Did they blink, sneeze, half shut an eye, or become startled or blinded by the flash? Come in and lay your money down. It’s a hoot for the whole family. Best get coding!

I often have many gripes about having IBS, and Crohn’s Disease, but by far the worst is the 10 sec warning I have before catastrophe strikes. So I had to pay & run for the toilets here in the store I’m in. Pinch & sprint. Nervous flop sweat beading upon my brow. Made it with nary a heartbeat to spare. Good lord I detest this particular need of mine. It was either dart for the stalls in here, or make a mess inside my car, as there was no way I’d get all the way across town to my home in time. At best I’d sully my front porch, at worst I’d befoul my drivers seat, shorts, and joggers, socks, shoes and potentially even my t-shirt, sweater and jacket. There’s just no compromising with the forces of nature. When nature calls, it bellows, and my insides quake. Bah!

So how is your Monday starting? I did manage to run a few errands first. That is a check in the plus column atleast. Ha.

Take care out there. It can always get worse. Ciao Bella!

Tried another go at Canada’s Wonderland and their Halloween Haunt spectacle last night, and dear god, so damn busy. Clue number one was the queue to got off highway 400 at Rutherford. Second was the traffic across Rutherford itself. Third was the forty minutes it took us to crawl up and along Jane Street to Springfield to get to the parking lot. Parking was a chaotic mess, but we found a spot about a six walk from the gates, so not awful. But I have never been to Wonderland and seen it this busy before. This blows all other “busy” days out of the water. Due to traffic we were only at the park for three hours, and thus managed to get on only three rides. Nearly an hours wait for each one. Tough luck kiddo. Plus it drizzled and sort of snowed just a touch. Thought that might clear a few folks out, but nope. Busy, busy, busy.

I drove all over York Region yesterday. Stouffville, Markham, Newmarket, back to Markham, across Markham, back to Stouffville, then out to Vaughn and back again. I’m positively pooped. Slept like shit last night too. Fun times.

Nothing spells out the weekend quite like waking up just as, or more exhausted than when you went to bed the night before. I even slept in until 9:00am before crawling out of bed. The extra two hours of sleep did not do much in the way of helping me out, at all. Possibly made it worse. Yay.

Good morning Saturday. How are you all doing? Just walked up the road to pick up my eldest from a sleep over. Nice that it’s so close by. Just over my in-laws fence, and up the way from us. She had a fabulous time, sounded like non stop fun and excitement when she explained it all to me in a flurry of hand gestures, partial dance steps, and “um, actually” as is her current affectation. The youngest however howled about having no sleep overs, fire side play dates, or parties to attend. She carried on that way until about 10pm, when she crashed, hard. So our evening with one child out for the night was a bust. No movie date night for us. Glad we had lunch together earlier in the day, otherwise that time would have been sorely missed. Hard to plan with two living chaos machines in the house. Little whirlwinds of destruction, and mess making. Are they friends today, mortal enemies, enemy combatants, best buddies joined at the hip? Or mortal kombat avatars looking to score a near fatality? Spin the wheel, take a guess, it’s anybody’s game!

What are the rest of todays plans you ask? Well, my wife and youngest child went to the Zoo for a walk about. My guess is to go see the poison dart frogs and snakes which my youngest likes so much. Reptiles are her jam, right now anyway. Used to be chickens(?) for some reason, then hamsters in mazes, and now snakes and such. The oldest is going bowling for 2 hours mid day, so I’ll be off taking her to that, then wandering the nearby mall to occupy myself.

If the weather holds I wouldn’t mind doing another Halloween Haunt at Wonderland before it gets really really cold at night. But truth be told we did go seven times this year, and I got one of my big wish rides in, so I’m pretty good on the thrill ride front. I’d love to ride Leviathan next spring if my oldest is finally tall enough to join me. And then Behemoth too. That would mean we can ride all of the largest coasters in the park height restriction free! Giv’er!

Made the effort in yesterdays surprise sunshine to start the leaves in the yard. Managed nine full bags of mulched up leaves. I’d much prefer to do it once on a long day, but only 30% of our leaves have come down so far. Enough to be noticeable compared to our neighbours whom pay people to maintain their property. But not enough to be a major problem. We need another one or two big wind/rain storms to bring the rest down. My vacuum bag mulcher needs leaves on the dryer side of the spectrum to work without clogging. So I need a storm to bring them down, and then two days of sunshine and breezes to dry those leaves off so that I can work them over and dress my front bed with the resulting mulch. I prefer it to hand bagging, by a very wide margin. It also requires less raking, which I also prefer. Very little leaning over or bending. Hardly any squatting so my thighs don’t scream at me for days afterwards. Plus I keep all the leaf moisture and biomass here where the trees are. Works for me. We used to have this toad that spent the spring/summer/fall in our garbage box, and he liked the leaf cover. Didn’t see him much this year, but we’ll keep it up in hopes the wee guy will come back. Keeping the leaf mulch is good for butterflies and helping acorns, walnuts to germinate. I like having trees on the property. I’d turn it into a small scale arboretum if I could! Rotating trees through as I need them. Mainly I want to keep the trees for 10-15 years, and then harvest them for wood stock for my furniture projects. I have my eyes on a saw mill, or chainsaw mill operation of my own to process the few logs I will have over the coming years. To dream a dream of wood. Ha.

Not sure why but it doesn’t feel much like a Saturday to me – yet. Hard to describe how a specific day of the week feels. But they certainly have one. I know that much. I’m just having difficulty putting the “feel” of it into coherent words. Maybe some other time. Have a good one. Ciao Bella.

A day much like any other, except I’m putting in an hour or so puttering about the house tidying up all of our “stuff”. So much. Just so much stuff, crap, garbage, things, accumulated possessions. Filling up every corner, piling up on top of each other, hiding table surfaces, chair seats, floor space, wall space, closets and nooks as well as crannies. Too much! The physical NEED to purge is growing stronger every time I pass by a mound of things left untouched for days or weeks, even months on end. Gag! Fit to burst I am.

In other news it is Friday yet again. Today is the day of the 13th. Kids ate at school, I’m cleaning up, family are moving about in various stages of health care treatment. It’s been a lot. Lots going on with the extended family here health wise. Not too sure what’s what at the moment. Those who are in the lead probably should not be. Not out of spite or malice, but… ineptitude to put it nicely I suppose. Failing to ask pertinent questions. Not passing vital info along. Unwillingness or inability to perform much needed tasks. It’s a lot, as I have said previously. So we sit and wait with a whole slew of questions left unanswered, or just don’t know the answer to because… inept person at the lead. I feel bad. It is a lot to take on. Stressful. Worrisome. Hard on the soul, I get it. But, on the other hand… I digress.

Birthday parties are all a flutter now that we are into the school year, and the social lives of our kids are starting to emerge. Happy to see it. Sleep overs, play dates, birthdays, so much going on. The manned coverage is proving useful with all of our scheduled extracurriculars. Getting gired by always being on the go. I am hoping that we can tone it down a bit in the new year as this has been a lot. Have a terrific weekend y’all. Ciao Bella.

That’s quite the unusual hobby you’ve picked up. Oh, you’re an arsonist are you? Name five great fires! Rome doesn’t count. I knew you were just a poser. Fake fan, fake fan! Do you even have any third degree burns, huh? Didn’t think so. Go play with fire crackers and come back once you’ve felt a thing or two, ok, bud? Right. Oh! You wanna go? Giv’er bud. Take ‘er for a rip!

In other news today is Thursday, just in case you thought it was Friday like my kids did. It’s a short week, but not that short. Also – next Friday is yet another PA Day, and short week. That makes three or four all ready, this first semester alone. Maybe breaks in the second half of the school year are few & far between. No matter. Wife’s off this year, so it doesn’t all fall into my lap this go-around. Going to be hard to see it return next school year though. House will feel empty again with just me working here.

I think we are closing the inlaws pool today. So that’s always good for hurting my knees and lower back. Just what I always wanted! More aches and pains. Take a ticket and wait in line. I’m still reeling from the cottage clean up last weekend. Composite planks are good for not rotting away, but they weigh nearly three or four times as much as a regular hard wood board. Screw some of those together and you have some fairly hefty chunks to haul around twice a year. Setting them out in the late spring, and putting them away come early fall. My two least favourite activities.

Cottages are fun but the upkeep, maintenance, and setting up, tearing down really sort of suck. I think we should pare a bunch of it back, but I’d be in the minority on that point. Although getting voted down by those who don’t help to set up or take down doesn’t sit right with me either. But, eh! What are you gonna do. If you want to play with the toys you have to clean them, store them, and take care of them in the off season. Once these kids get older you better believe they’ll be out there with their strong vibrant back muscles lifting & moving stuff around in my stead. Count on it. Bet. Happy Thursday. Ciao Bella.

The number of the beast! What a momentous day! Probably why I was able to work like a man possessed earlier this week. Might also explain the back pain! Ha. No. I know exactly why my back hurts, it’s from heavy lifting at the cottage, and stacking cords of wood. That part isn’t a mystery. Get old, get sore doing physical labour. Duh! Just had to call out and mark the date! Six hundred sixty six days of unbroken writing streak. Take it all in. That’s it, breathe it in. Take a lap. Now carry on. Bon soir!

If I thought the work I had lined up was going to carry me through until the Christmas break, I was mistaken. Greatly. Turns out, the more you do something, the better at it you get. Pre planning, working smarter, batch processing. All of these things meant I did Q4’s work in about three very dedicated weeks. Not too shabby. Glad I’m paid by the project and not by the hour on some instances. I’m not free and clear entirely, but in Nother day or so I should have the fifth of six reports off of my desk. The last one will take some time coming to me, which is to be expected.

Means I can turn to the leaves, and Halloween decorations. Possibly the purchase of a new fridge, as ours is so temperamental of late, it has lost all amusement. Fighting with it was funny, at first. But do that every five weeks or less and it becomes entirely aggravating. Oh well.

I imagine the invoices will get paid closer to the holidays, so no worries in spending all of those Q4 proceeds ahead of schedule. I do hope there are a couple more projects, but I’m ok if there aren’t. As we get closer to Christmas and another birthday I’ll have lots to occupy my time regardless of paid work.

You ever get the sense that you are losing time? Or did way more than you thought possible in a brief, but narrowly focused period? Hm. Maybe it’s just me. Had a power focus session monday evening, followed by a hard day and poof! Got through a bunch of pages. Very strange. Hope I didn’t just forget a bunch of stuff you know? Weird. Ciao Bella.

Tables by Design, pies by Design, curtains by Design, I do not know who By Design is, or what it wants, but it must be an enormous conglomerate trying to take over the world, one niche item at a time. Insanity.

Happy Tuesday October 10th, 2023.