Family – Page 2 – Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Dreading the return to school.

January 19, 2022January 19, 2022greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Have my kids at home for the rest of this week and then as of Monday they will return to in person learning. At least until everything crumbles, or one of them gets a sniffle and they all have to come back for 1, 5, or ten days of isolation.

This wasn’t so bad when I just had the one school aged child, and we were on a less transmissible early variant. But two kids – fighting and whining and getting very little out of their online classes is a real pain. Upgrading their learning by being in person is great, but worried sick of an infection and serious illness, the potential for a constant slew of interruptions to class is going to be just as bad.

I am going to vent / whine / complain about it here, and now, incase that wasn’t already very clear. Feels very much as if we are damned if I keep them home, or damned if I send them back into the fray. It’s all just a little exhausting to be honest. Losing sleep and changing my mind every other day isn’t much help either. Does the social isolation and sub par quality of elearning outweigh a possible mild infection? Or are my kids the ones who will wind up in hospital on ventilators, or suffer life long complications from long covid? It is a really horrible choice to have to make.

We were all violently ill in Jan/Feb of 2020, but was that the OG COVID-19 or a run of the mill flu. It left me ill for three weeks and then some, but at that stage no one could get a test unless you were on deaths door and in the hospital ICU. And I wasn’t anywhere near that bad. I did get prescribed Tamiflu which was awful, but I came through it five days later on the mend so…

Times like these I wish we lived somewhere warmer, as being able to ride our bikes, swim, hike and be outside in the sunshine. Made elearning far more bearable to just run outside to burn off steam. We’re not so keen when it’s well below zero with nearly two foot of snow on the ground. Snow and cold lose their appeal pretty quickly here. Although the crystal clear blue skies and sunsets are gorgeous.

Take care of yourselves. I don’t envy the choices we have to make in order to survive this.

One of the most vivid dreams I ever had was…

January 6, 2022greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Me listening to my daughters tell a combined imaginary tale about knights, dragons and monsters in a mystical land, and I was trying to transcribe this hectic, self referential logic nightmare of a tale as they spoke it out loud in tandem like a vomited stream of consciousness. It was such a vivid memory, I could feel the fluctuating story ideas, like they were there breathing at my finger tips. It made almost no sense as they told it, but in my dream I was able to sort of throw it on the table to smash apart, and then take a really wide angle lens to it and rebuild it into a coherent epic fantasy novel. The best part about it was taking the whole spoken tale and sort of doing this exploded view – like you get of an engine diagram format, but being able to draw elements together, or add parts and realign story beats so that it all made sense, and flowed together. It was a wildly exciting dream, and when I woke up I remembered absolutely none of the story, but only the rush of picking it apart and putting it back together to make some kind of sense. Which sounds tedious, but also like a performance in and of itself. I’d love to revisit that dream, and actually remember the story my girls told me. If you’ve ever spent time listening to kids under six tell you stories, you know how many gaps there can be, what sort of logical leaps you need to make, and how easy it is to lose the plot. Good times. I guess I had a dream about editing. Wow! – go me. in

The long January begins with a – whine…

January 5, 2022greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Once again we have come back to online e-learning for the kids. The long grey bleak winter has finally settled upon the ground around us, and we are house bound. Which is both a blessing (greatly reduced Covid exposure) and a curse, cabin fever with two very socially starved kids. It could very well be far, far worse. I mainly bemoan the situation because I detest the cold and dreary Canadian winter, and much prefer the sunshine and warmth of summer. We also prefer biking, walking, swimming and other far more fun warmer weather outdoor activities. In all actuality we are very protected here in our home bubble, and we shouldn’t be put out by the actions required to flatten the curve and bring the numbers of cases back down to a reasonable level of infection. We have masked up, socially distanced, hand washed, and avoided going into more than one store per week for almost two years now. We were very fortunate that we qualified for a 3rd booster dose, and my older child has had her first dose, but our youngest isn’t eligible for six more months. I work from home regardless of the situation so I’m not impacted much work wise. I can put the bulk of my work into the evenings if need be in order to help my two kids navigate online school, home work, lessons and finding pages or web sites for classwork. If both of us were full timers things would get ugly, but my work is flexible so we have that going for us. The only real impact is to my cleaning schedule which I can’t properly do with two young kids underfoot. Hobbies are on hold until cases come down and schools can safely open for the educators, admin, cleaning staff as well as all age groups of children. The next however many weeks of us all together twenty four seven could get ugly, but it is definitely for the best.

Why, oh why

January 2, 2022greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Do my children insist on trying to communicate with me at the pitch of a whiney tea kettle. A stream of unending vowels and consonants imitating the squealed peel of an agitated dolphin. To my hearing lossed ears it’s just a pointless whistle that contains no information at all. Like a fire alarm in a high C monotone in which I am requested to decipher both the meaning and an action plan remedy. Followed, obviously by tears, flailing and shouting from the other sibling in response. And it happens constantly no matter how many times I tell them that I don’t speak tea kettle, dolphin, or whistle languages fluently. The Joy’s of parenthood I suppose. Blessed.

One of life’s simple pleasures…

December 29, 2021greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

In a time of chaos and panic, or when you are just starting to find yourself feeling a little off, is taking a quiet moment to close your eyes and lean your heated forehead against a cold pane of glass and shut your eyes for a second or two. It’s brief, but aren’t most of our adult moments of splendor brief and fleeting. That momentary flash of cool across your brow, and perhaps also your cheeks and nose. The calming blackness from your closed eyes, the fading out of the background noise from your life. Taking in one, or two rich, full breaths. Then leaning back and carrying on with your day, evening, nights activities. Stay sane out there. Try to stay healthy if you can.

The day after ‘The BIG Day’…

December 26, 2021December 26, 2021greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

And I feel hung over without having had anything booze or beer related to drink. It was a long and somewhat unconventional Christmas day, you know, with the isolation and the quarantine and the pandemic still running amok in the general population. I know for a fact that at least a couple of the kids gifts were a slam dunk, home run, field goal, Uno! And a few were near misses due to the aforementioned grand slams. While none were entire failures, so I’m happy with that. It’s a long day, preceeded by a terrible nights sleep, ensconced in over stimulation, sweets and hyper activity so that there were a multitude of melt downs, hard feelings and squabbles among the children. Par for the course at this age bracket. Otherwise getting them back into bed by 8:00pm and then watching ‘Don’t look up’ until around 11:00pm in relative peace and quiet was a great cap to a long and challenging day. If the weather could either warm up or snow a bunch we could figure out how to entertain our isolated family over the rest of the school break and through the last five days of our isolation that would be greatly appreciated.

Aiming for those last few days of 2021 writing streak…

December 24, 2021January 9, 2022greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Which means pulling out all the stops to create something written every day until the new year begins in order to fulfill some weird kind of anxiety about not doing enough creative writing during the year. For all those days when I followed the white rabbit down the hole on YouTube regarding wood working or welding or sculpting or entertainment news about movie spoilers. For those lull days when I didn’t do jack shit. For those weeks in September and October where my singular focus was on home DIY projects and not being creative in any way, shape or form. For those days when I really wanted to watch a movie instead, or bury my face in a good book. Now it is a race against time to prepare some short, fun ‘content’ for my blog. On the plus side, by skipping writing in September I was also able to buy our Christmas presents and avoid busy stores, malls, parking lots and any possible supply issues. The big show starts tomorrow, with some champagne and orange juice at days first light. Stay sane, stay safe, and be merry (where possible).

I too am excited for Christmas…

December 23, 2021greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Whether or not Covid looms over it like a bloody great black storm cloud threatening to drown us all at the slightest whim. Regardless of hand washing, masking, social distancing and drastically limited contacts to anyone beyond our immediate family. Even with that horrific tangible threat just looming on the horizon, my childrens bottomless zeal for Christmas, Santa, family fun and presents is keeping us on the cheerful side of what could potentially be a drab and dreary worry filled occasion. God bless the blissful ignorance of children and their singular fixation on Christmas time! While the inexhaustible energy levels can be bothersome, some might say, the optimism is hard to beat at a time like this.

How do my children have this inexhaustible…

December 22, 2021greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

Supply of energy, all day every day? I’ve gone so far as to supply them with multiple outdoor play dates this whole week and it makes nary a dent in the ear piercing shriek of delight levels of play that they engage in. Seems like wailing at the top of their lungs in our small cozy home is the order for the day, each and every time. It can be infuriating! Adorable at first and then grating on those self same nerves. The constant refrain of “bring it down a notch or two!”, or “Separate if you can’t handle sitting together”, are met with blank stares and renewed vigor on the auditory front. I swear their vocal cords should waiver and shred apart at these levels of noise, but they only get stronger, louder and more sustained. It’s a whole thing. Feel our pain, and know it isn’t just your house, or your kids that are driving you a little mad some days. If I thought strapping them into a treadmill for a few hours a day would drain some of the fight out of them, rest assured I’d have them harnessed in immediately. But I fear it would just help them to build their stamina so that they could be overly dramatic for much longer. Ah kids. The apple of my eye. I love my kids, I love my kids…

Not too much going on today

December 19, 2021greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment

So here is a photo of our former pup Alfie Francis before he past away in May. This is the first Christmas in twelve years without his wagging tail knocking ornaments off the tree, or his snuffling nose tearing through wrapping paper on gifts under the tree. He was a good looking boy, and though his last yea to year and a half were challenging, he was well loved.