Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Tag: childhood

Up before 5:00 am…

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Up before 5:00 am…

Too scared she’ll miss the bus for the Royal Ontario Museum trip today. Not that the bus isn’t going to leave until around 9:00am or anything. No, had to be up and dressed, waiting at the door before I even woke up this morning. Lord knows what the kids will do come Christmas morning!

We did hit a small snag, in that our usual vehicle is in the shop for repairs so we have a borrowed vehicle for a few days. One that does not contain an ice scraper, so I had I sit in it while it warmed up enough to clear the windshield. Then I used the blade of my hands to clear tactical spots on the side windows so that I could see out, and use the mirrors. The spare scraper from inside the house has gone missing, which I wasn’t aware it had even been used yet, by anyone. So that reserve item needs to be found and/or replaced sharpish. Crisis was averted and we made it to school without too many tears or outbursts from either kid. The youngest has had her nose out of joint for a few days due to all the build up concerning the bus rides and ROM trip into downtown. She is a jealous little beastie. Not good with expressing joy for others if she isn’t getting anything out of the situation either. We will need to work on that. But, in the end I got them to school, dressed, and without tears being shed. A win for me, a slight one at that, but I’ll take it.

My lone nostril issue seems to fade in, fade out as the days go by. I have noticed that when I take my temperature it can range from anywhere between 35.6° to 37.1° Celcius. Which seems weird to me. But no positivity on a RAT, and no other issues I can think of. Fatigue has subsided, almost as quickly as it came on, but that’s pretty standard for me. Nasty guts is no barometer to go by for me for new or worsening illness, so all things being equal, that’s par for the course in my life currently. I can breathe out of both nostrils no new head aches. No sore throat. No cough or lung/rib pain. Sense of smell and taste are very much alive & well. Possibly just a cold? Hard to know at this point. It wasn’t all that bad. Just felt kinda off. Not wretchedly ill, as with other nasty bugs we’ve caught before.

Funny story, I developed Crohn’s Disease about six months after having the worst flu of my life, one Christmas when I was twelve. My grand parents were visiting from England that year, and I was in my pj’s, lying on the floor of the family room watching tv with my family, when I burped out of no where. And I remember turning away from the tv to tell my mum, “I can taste rotten eggs”. She gave me a puzzled look, and by the following morning I was feverish, and vomiting and having all sorts of gastric distress.

Do you remember that old Tom Petty music video about Alice in wonderland where her body becomes cake and the mad hatter and the rabbit eat her as she watches and screams, while lying on a table? That happened in my dream. And a dark black room, with white and black checker board floors began to get longer, as if the rear wall was falling away, and the floors curled, and buckled, and bulged, as my bed became all topsy turvy like a Tim Burton film set. I had days of a high fever, and had the same fifteen seconds of dream a thousand times over on repeat, until it just cleared up and went away. – Then one late May afternoon when at Canada’s Wonderland on a school trip Crohn’s Disease decided to make itself known to me, and that has been my life ever since. That was 2013. Fun times. Weird memory to recall so vividly. Huh. I am not entirely sure if that was when I developed the grey forelock of hair that I’ve had since forever, but is not in any childhood photos before my early teens. Could be. Or maybe not.

As of 4:48pm today we are officially into winter! A new season is upon us. And the shortest day will happen, and then the evenings will ever so slowly begin to get lighter later. Just a handful of seconds per day. I hope you have a wonderful winter break. And have restful holidays whatever you celebrate. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

And so the present wrapping saga begins.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on And so the present wrapping saga begins.

I don’t mind wrapping one or two items on any given day, but I detest spending hours on end wrapping everything under the sun. I think I drew the line at stocking stuffers last year, and straight up refused to gift wrap shampoo bottles, tooth paste and hair brushes and the like. Way too much work. Sounds curmudgeonly, I get that, but by the week before Christmas my kids have my nerves frazzled. So this year, I am formulating a new game plan to alleviate much of what I don’t like. Smaller doses of wrapping, spread out over a whole month. 30 days until the big man makes his early morning debut.

We are using more and more gift bags as I get older and more ornery. Rather than leaving the whole lot for one night, I think I’m going to schedule just a few minutes every day to wrap one or two things. I also detest the asymmetrical, non standard box shapes for all of these toys nowadays. Give me flat surfaces, 90° corners, and fewer compound curves. Not that I want my wrapped gifts to look rigid and over tailored, but crinkled edges, and bunching isn’t my bag man. Not that the kids care. Like, at all. So, I don’t really know why I concern myself with it so much.

I’m trying to get into the holiday mood, and it’s increasingly becoming more difficult to do so. The tree is up, decorated and lit. The exterior lights are up and illuminated nightly. There is a new light up wreath & bow on the door. That’s about the most of it until the kids get older, and we start to lose more of the toys that clutter the house. We sat down to watch Elf as a family, and later on I sat down to Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Still not feeling it. Maybe I need a movie marathon with Scrooged, NL Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, Die Hard, Gremlins & Home Alone to really drive it home. The presence of snow really does help it feel like Christmas. That and music. I miss the yellow LP my folks used to play on endless repeat. I have a photo of it somewhere. Ah yes, here it is:

One of the few Holiday albums that we played over and over again. There was a cassette tape that my brother Steve had too, with Kenny Rogers on it, which is forever burned into my psyche aswell.

Hard to over state exactly how much of my memories of Christmas is entwined with this old vinyl LP. I did scour iTunes to locate some of the songs individually, but it isn’t the same recordings, or we had our record player set differently… either way, it’s close, but not the same.

Dreams are weird.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Dreams are weird.

Last night I dreamt that I was composing this amazing blog post (of all things) and I was dictating it out loud and it was all very intense and exciting. But do you think I can recall even a sliver of what it was about? The lasting image was of having fun composing the post, not the actual content within it. Tells you something doesn’t it. Boring! It means it’s more important to me to write, than what I write about. How dull. But that fits me to a T. Pragmatic, robotic me. The act of doing is in itself the reward. How intrinsically valued can you be. Ugh.

Still haven’t found the time nor energy to go see Dr Strange 2, or Top Gun: Maverick yet. Perhaps after these family parties are done. Although, then I need to get on top of planning my youngest’s pool party at the end of the month. Seven confirmed guests so far. Three will be away and can’t come. So this time (with lessons learned) we go 10:00-12:00pm, and stick locally. Fewer guests, and a shorter period of time, earlier in the day. Pizza, drinks, pool, cake and home time! I’ll let my wife sort out the goody bags. The holy grail of childhood apparently. Which isn’t something I recall being a big deal in my childhood. Not sure if I just don’t remember, because I’m thirty five years plus out of that age bracket, or it wasn’t really a thing with the families of my childhood friends. Couldn’t tell you, if I’m being completely honest.

It is strange, what I can and can’t remember about being a kid. I still recollect my late teens years, fairly vividly (because I was sick, and depressed from being sick). But I couldn’t say much about being a little kid. I do know that I was pretty oblivious. It wasn’t until Facebook came around in the early 2000’s when I realized some of my friends had older siblings, or any siblings at all. Singularly focused on my friends or our activities. Didn’t much care for whatever else was going on. Still don’t.

Yeah, dreams are what’s weird.