Day FortyFive: Saturday... Got to sleep in some so that's always a nice start to the weekend. Heather made Lawson's breakfast so I made hers and we spent a good deal of time in the kitchen today while boy played with his friends online on the X-Box. Started with some omelettes and fresh coffee and after that we started poking at things, filled up and organized the spice rack. I know, it's not a job that's normally worth mentioning up here, salt on the left, pepper on the right, done. Well our spices are a little more diverse than any one given grocery store up here. Like to the tune of at least 40 different kinds which are all in use regularly... how do I know they all used regularly?  I looked at Heather and said, 'You don't like this one do you?' She didn't, I threw it out... we don't have space for crap we don't use. Only one got tossed out today. She followed that up by making 1 carb brownies... BUT then we had no eggs left, I went to the Mennonites place and picked some up. First time I have been out of the house in weeks, 2 minutes in getting eggs, no one else there, and back in the car, away I went. Seemed safe enough. So I got Lawson some Chelsea Buns to keep him away from our brownies (FYI it didn't work, he ate both) and I picked up some sausage as well... Pulled out the meat slicer and cut up the sausage, some ham and cheese and put it on the fresh buns Heather made while I was out. I then got to the meat for the Souvlaki, not a pretty piece of meat by any stretch of the imagination... took almost an hour to pull out all the pigeon (as Heather calls it) and cube it up and dump it into a marinade for the night... ok so Souvlaki tomorrow night then. Tonight Heather made up some Salisbury Steaks and some veggies for us, Lawson ate the same with some KD on the side. After dinner we watched a movie (starting to become a habit on Saturday or any other day that ends in a 'Y') - After which I started on another T-Shirt, this time for a Drag Race team a friend runs down south. I will post a copy tomorrow when I'm done. At some point during the day Lawson managed to suck Heather into playing some more Minecraft on the X-Box, did some dance party thing... And watched a few episodes of 'Nailed It!' It was a hard day on me... I even almost work on something or thought about doing something constructive... maybe tomorrow.

Day FortyFour: Day 44 started out just like any other day, the sun came up, the cold morning air eventually gave way to the cold rest of the day air... and the boy is starting to go stir crazy, he wanted nothing but MineCraft food today. Do you recall me saying he has creative days with food and it's not always a good thing, ya... this is what I was getting at. He set next to me on the bed and made out a menu for the day, oh nay nay, a pen and paper you say? He logged into MineCraft and built a large white wall with terracotta blocks for corners with designs on them so that the wall resembled an actual menu. He then took signs and picture frames, place a picture of the food on the wall (page) and a description of it on a sign beside it. Breakfast: Bread with Honey, watermelon and a glass of milk (I wouldn't let him drink out of a bucket) / Lunch: Eggs and Potatoes / Dinner: Salmon, Carrot Sticks and Baked Potatoes. Not one plate came back with even a crumb of food on it. See he can eat but there has to be a purpose to it other than you need to eat so you don't die, apparently some days that reason isn't good enough. So while I' making MineCraft food (yes I know I was going to make souvlaki, didn't happen, they don't have that in MineCraft) and the dishwasher was sitting in the corner crying, "Fix me... fix me... come on, I know you have the parts... please fix me...". So I got out the screw driver and disassembled the poor thing again (obviously the part I have for it goes in the middle of everything <Murphy's Law, Section 14 (d)>). When I was finished I pushed it back in the hole and connected it all back up again, ran a load of nothing through a rinse cycle to check for leaks (frankly I expected water spouts not leaks) surprisingly there were none. I looked in the sink, which for weeks now has been full... and there was nothing. I had inadvertently broke down the day before and actually washed everything by hand. What ever, it will get use tomorrow I'm sure. Heather walked in the door and I pushed the fish at her, 'You need to cook this' - because frankly she makes better baked salmon than I do (But I make better fried fish so...). We found a bottle of Champagne and opened it. The wife wondered what we were celebrating, I'm like, "hell woman we have a bottle of Champagne, isn't that cause enough for celebration?" - Apparently she was OK with that answer. So after a few drinky poos we sat down to watch the rest of the National Theater's production of Twelfth Night, frankly I found it entertaining once I quit getting all bunched up about the modern twist, it worked well and added to it... good for a laugh, we give it 2 thumbs up. Don't let the Old English mess you... tough it out... it's not that hard to figure out. Then it was dark again, the little one and the medium sized one fell to sleep. Note to self, Tomorrow is Saturday... getting hard to keep track of the days... not a COVID19 thing or have anything to do with isolation... pretty sure I'm just getting old.

Day FortyThree: Woke up, step one complete... make breakfast, done... dump most of breakfast in the stove and on the floor, check and check. Made way too much anyway, still plenty for Lawson. The wife had to go shopping today to pick up some food, eggs, cheese, veggies and a pork roast, Sooo... I had to find some money... what do I have that people will be needing that I can sell for a few bucks? Then it hit me, Stakes... I made a call to a fellow apocalypse prepper and made a deal, he came by and picked up 900 of them, should do for food for the month. Now I need to make more for my own protection. I rebundled the stakes in smaller quantities so they could be more easily transported and fit in his car. Out the door and finished by noon. Lawson spent his morning on the gaming console and finishing up his homework, I believe he is caught up now. For lunch the last Easter Egg of 2020 was sacrificed to a ham & cheese omelette (see photo). In the afternoon we watched some YouTube and cleaned up the kitchen some, we took turns cleaning dishes until they were all done, he's getting pretty good at it. Heather made it home late having to stop by the store on the way home... then requested omelettes. Not sure what to say but OK, if that's what you want... fried up some bacon, peppers, mushrooms, dumped some cheese in them... all was good. I'm sure we will have a real meal tomorrow. The National Theater put out another play today... we are about half way through it at this point, pretty funny so far, try to watch the second half of it tomorrow. Not something the boy was interested in so off to the basement with him and a bowl of Kraft Dinner, wasn't going to make him eat eggs again. Apparently there was a gaming event taking place live online, he played in to with his friends from school. Seems another one of Lawson's summer hockey tournaments just fell off the calendar, sent out some emails after everyone nodded off to try and figure out what the official word on them is... looks like Kingston is a no go, not sure about the one in the Toronto area. He's going to be disappointed. 

Green Eggs and Sam

Day FortyTwo: Mostly Harmless... Polished off a few more Easter Eggs this morning in the form of meat and cheese omelettes... not liquidy enough to ooze out the cracks in the egg shell if it was broken but definitely not anywhere near the realms of making a deviled egg from... A good jostling with a fork makes it adequate for omelettes... it really gives you a good sense of how much you should actually mix an egg to make an omelet, once you get use to reliquefying an egg from almost almost soft boiled, you are doing it right... so many people under beat them because it takes time. And Butter! Cook it in Butter! Took a shower, breakfast was exhausting. Lawson got canned soup for lunch, someone has to eat it, he complains about the micro small pieces of chicken in his chicken noodle soup from the can... I'm sorry there isn't a quarter pound of meat in your bowl, suck it up, Daddy made home made soup just the other day. After lunch we sorted out his online school work, apparently he was in the wrong folder or something and wasn't getting his assignments... looks like he has a bit of a back log to work on now on top of the stuff we do around the house. I took some stuff out of the bottom of the freezer that looked like a block of frozen earth... pretty sure that would make a good Earth Day project... I would take it and recycle it into food. My culinary weapon of choice today... the 'InstaPot' - I swear if you left a shoe in that thing long enough it would be edible... well a real leather shoe, not one of those plastic things. Turned out to be some sort of beef which I cubed, sautéed with some shrooms and onions then bolted down and pressure cooked the hell out of... turned out nice, could have used a nice bottle of port, a little for the pot a little for me, alas we are out. After dinner Heather once again got sucked in to playing Minecraft down stairs with the boy and then complained about how he saves that all up for her when she gets home... ROTFLMAO - Ya, he's not saving anything, he's been going like that all day long, when you get home he's wore me out and just moving on to the next victim so... While they played I some how ended up falling down a worm hole and binge watching 3 years of these guys trying to build a boat (Acorn to Arabella)... kinda figured if it started 3 years ago that I would get to see a finished project before COVID kicked it... I will check back again in another 3 years to see if they are any closer. I did learn 2 things, I've always wanted to build something like that and after seeing the work and money put into I know why I've been putting it off... and (they had a parts boat the stripped for parts) NEVER buy a 100 year old wooden boat... the thing reminded me of almost any home I have owned, patches and repairs on top of patches and repairs trying to hold things together that stop existing 50 years ago... but in the case of a boat (unlike the house) it needs to float. Maybe I will build a 1:16th scale model ship out of pizza boxes or something to curb my creative need. If only I had some free time at home with nothing to do...

Day FortyOne: Boy had another boring food day, some days he is completely uninspired by food and others he wants to make gourmet nibbles from scratch. His favourite cooking show is 'Nailed It' so at least he is holding true to the theme. He played some Virtual Hockey and I got back to work on my stake stocking... up to 901 by this evening... 3x what is shown in the photo. After the making eggs, fruit and grilled cheese sandwich to feed the child (some days two minute meals are a good thing I guess), I found myself with some extra time on my hands, so I fixed the clothes dryer, no parts needed, just disassemble it, take out all the half eaten socks it hadn't fully digested yet and reassemble it... the hard part was finding my cell phone afterwards. It wasn't until I noticed the glowing light from inside the dryer that I remembered what I had used it for last... yes, a flashlight. Took some fish out of the freezer... thawed it out... 4 lbs of fish turned into 2 lbs of fish after the water drained off of it... we spent some time in the kitchen battering and frying and eating said fish... very little actually made it to the table and Lawson never made it to the table either. He squirrelled his away to the computer room to watch some videos while he ate. The birthday cake is gone.  Likely a good thing for me because I really want another piece. Lawson talked Heather into playing video games with him after dinner... he's going to have to show me how he does that, lol... Anyone need sawdust for anything? These bags keep piling up and I haven't got them to the dump yet... maybe I will make fire logs out of them or something. By the time I pulled myself out of the basement tonight, everyone was fast asleep.

Day Forty (40): Didn't sleep last night, got a few hour in after Heather went to work and before the battle zone in the basement cued up... you know Fortnight wasn't too bad of a game when he played it on his iPad... HOWEVER... when you put it on the TV and run it through the stereo with the base cranked up... we let's just apologise to the people next door now, we are sorry. Pretty sure they were already up. Rolled out of bed to check what school work we had to do this week... turns out they had an online thing at 9am... I use the word HAD because well it was past that. Had to limit video game time today, with all the new games he is spending greater than average time doing pretty much fucking useless stuff... but who knows maybe WW3 will be fought online to adhere to conventional social distancing practices. OK you're right WW4... Took orders for lunch, Grilled Cheese was requested... some days it appalls me what the boy actually Wants to Eat... I made him eat a banana too. After lunch we went back over the Lord of the Rings stuff and he summarized chapters 4-8 and posted about it in French on his classes Facebook group. I still need to contact his teacher and try to figure out why he doesn't seem to be getting any of the actual assignment, maybe there are none. Throughout the day I was able to get 300 stakes packaged up to be stored in the bunker. Put a chicken in the Rotisserie for dinner and Heather cued up some rice and broccolini. Don't ask what happen after dinner, it involved online banking and hours on hold with the bank... 1st bank account I've had in 10 years... starting to remember why I didn't have one. Good Night.

Covid Vampire/Zombie Killing Stakes

Day ThirtyNine: I was accurate in assessing the time of awakening of the Family on a Sunday morning... why these people can't just fucking sleep in is beyond me... I gave up, conformed and also got up at 7:30am. I pushed 4 peanuts in my pie hole, got a glass of ice tea and returned to the horizontal position in my bed. Checked the status of the new GoaliePow video, at hour 9 of the upload it was making good time... only 1.5 hours left... maybe a new record. This is of the Hockey School at the beginning of the 2019-20 season in Cochrane... One of the goalies from a Facebook group Lawson belongs to has offered to help him out and wanted to see some footage of his training... since he gets none with his team, I had to dig back away in the archives. I think next we need to look at what he wants to do with this goalie thing and where he see himself in 5 or 10 years. Having a plan and a goal won't leave him without a place to play. Heather brought a nice omelet to my horizontal location for consumption in front of the glowing monitor as the upload time marched on. We actually got Heather to play a co-op daily challenge in BTD6. The 3 of us kicked some butt and then strayed off in different directions as the sun peaked in the sky. Tubby time and then some lunch... I made it to the table for this meal, tuna wrap, couldn't eat them all, saved one for later. Off to the dungeon to make 7 pieces of wood into almost 1000 pieces of wood... by dinner time the pile of kindling like material was almost waist deep. Tomorrows agenda includes putting points on these stakes... when this CODIV-Bat Virus-Vampire/Zombie Apocalypse Shit actually hits the fan I'm going to be ready... 1000 wooden stakes is a good start to defending against at least the population of this town. I will take some photos of the impressive pile when I bundle them up and put them into storage in the bunker. BTW that generated 2 full garbage bags of sawdust... there has to be a good use for that... let me think on it over night. Where was I... oh yes, called up for dinner. Apparently while I was working on homeland defence the wife managed to do laundry, clean up the kitchen, make keto buns and make dinner... Ham casserole, cheese, some veggies in there, more cheese... and pork snacks on top for added crunch. I know what you are thinking... and yes that was the last of the Ham but no we do still have a few green eggs left from Easter. Sorry I will now exit your mind and you can have it back, BTW, scary as hell in there just so you know. Boy scurried off to the basement to watch some videos after we finished off another slice of B-Day Cake. Almost not worth putting what's left away, pretty sure it looks like breakfast tomorrow at this point because after what I did today, I won't be able to move tomorrow. Maybe I should get a glass of water and some drugs before I get to the point of none movement in the AM.

I know what your're thinking again... "Rod, please... this is a real national crisis. Please try to take it seriously." - Oh but I am... I wouldn't pull your leg. I may even start to take orders (see photo)… I think $300 for a bundle is fair, buy two bundles and I will throw in a free wooden mallet to drive the stakes through you're foes heart... although I will have to find a way to word that so I can't be held liable for and accidental slayings that may arise due to the use of my products... remember people they are only for slaying the already previously infected living dead and only if they pose a threat to you or a loved one. Note: they will take out Zombies as well, so if you don't get a chance to use what you have in stock there will always be the Next Zombie Apocalypse to look forward too. It's a lot of work to make the 2" x 8" x 16' long lumber into these light weight more manageable Vampire Killing Weapons of Wood (TM) (c) 2020 Turnbull

Day ThirtyEight: Starting to get worried that this is going to make the thought of jail time less of a deterrent than it used to be... "Five years? Pft! We did 7 in the 20's when the COVID19 thing threatened to wipe humanity off the globe." Heather got up early and made Lawson a birthday cake, a blue, red and yellow cake with equally colourful icing and sprinkles. We sang happy birthday to him along with his friend on the phone, then he ate cake... ok I ate cake too... bad squishy! A little piece of birthday cake every now and again isn't going to kill me, now bringing in wood... that might. Started a little arts and crafts project today and brought in some wood, cut it in 4 foot lengths and stacked it in the dining room to dry overnight (it's still frozen outside here and the icy wood doesn't cut as well) I'll update you on this project throughout the week. Shhh... Now with the game pass a number of the games previously enjoyed on the iPad are now being played on the big screen down stairs... or so I though. Midway through the day the boy comes up the stairs and proclaims we need a bigger TV. Now it's an older model but it's still a good size 54" or something like that and I know he's standing in front of it, he doesn't sit... so he's maybe 5-6 feet away, honestly I had to go down and see what his problem was. Oh and yes, the Christmas tree is still up on the treadmill. The problem is the game isn't setup perfectly for the screen or vice versa and what goes nicely to the edge of the screen for movies now cuts off the bottom line of text on his game and he can't read the bottom of the screen... batteries in the remote are dead and I can't reach the controls on the TV to change the setting so when the batteries are finished charging we will fix it tomorrow. Finished off the soup, Heather made some keto/gf cheese and jalapeno biscuits which went nicely with it. I cut more wood. Then we finished off another GoaliePow video, this one is of his hockey school in Cochrane at the beginning of the year. A full hour of drills and goalie training, not real enthralling stuff but something he can watch when planning out things he needs to practice, hey, being a goalie isn't an easy job. Saturdays are slowly becoming pizza and wings night, yes real Buffalo Chicken Wings not like the 'Buffalo' chicken wings you get in restaurants up here... seriously they have no idea, they aren't complicated, don't overthink it, they aren't battered or breaded or dusted with stuff and they don't come in different flavors. Some Marky Mark Movie was cued up for the evenings entertainment and everyone was late getting to bed... does this mean they will sleep in tomorrow? ROFTLMAO - $5 says they are both up before 7:30am looking at things on the internet.

Day ThirtySeven: Honestly I shit you not, day 37... no hockey in Canada... and it started early today, 5:30 am... fumbled around for the cell phone to play video games... hey I didn't say it was a productive start. The wife had it, she was already playing video games... well I guess I know what woke me up. Not long after Heather left for work the boy came down and we cued up a bout of Minecraft, more new updates to the beta version (when the new version is released it's going to be impressive). In view of the current situation his request for a particular birthday gift seemed a reasonable venture... I signed him up for some ultimate game pass thing that gives him access to a huge library of games for his gaming console. <look for GoaliePow#5340> We got things sorted out, it resumed downloading games it had started months before when Melanie was helping get his game running at Christmas time. Not like Hockey being his only game was a bad thing, he really loves it... but if we are going to be trapped in our homes for another 3 years I might want to play something too... Today was also ham soup day. I cooked up the rest of the bones and scraplets of meat and made soup... we had cheese, some leftover veggies... Mmmm... there's not a lot better than creamy, cheesey, home made soup, tended to over the day, a little of this and a little of that added to taste... always full by the time it comes to eat but Meh... After lunch Lawson got 2WeeksOfEvenings working on his console and played with his friends for a bit before tuning in to his Live online Soccer training with one of the Coaches from the camp he normally attends in the summer. I think it wore him out a bit, he needed to hydrate to keep going. This is a small fish in a big pond year if they ever get to play (10 years old in the U12 division). Talk to my dad on the phone today about my last visit to Niagara in which we missed him... so we mostly talked about why we missed him which was because he wasn't there... off in Australia on a walk-about or something like that, I'd say more but if you want that story you should get it directly from him.  Apparently grandma's old folks home has a number of cases of the COVID19, she's still fine as long as she can figure out which device is the remote for the TV and which is the Phone, which is understandable at 103 years old or something like that... and maybe under the influence as well, pretty sure that was a little while after the liquor store delivery. Heather walked in the door and after finding out I spoke with my dad asked the typical girl questions, 'so what's new with your dad?' In man fashion I was able to summarize the 2 hour conversation... 'Oh not much.' (honestly 2 hours is nothing, most of his stories are told in great detail... 'in real time', 1/2 an hour in he was still telling me about the airport in Vancouver on the way to Australia), his stories are always epic... Having had the soup for lunch, boy opted for chicken, fries and another round of video games... Heather and I ate hot soup and watched some theater... We saved yesterday's National Theatre's presentation of Treasure Island for tonight. 2 Thumbs up, much better than last weeks bore-a-thon. Go look for it and watch it on YouTube, good for the whole family, it will only be available until next Wednesday so do it now... Oh good, she fell to sleep, I can have my cell phone back. LOL Good Night

Day ThirtySix: Lawson's Birthday... a crappy Easter and now this, we've rescheduled activities until the weekend so at least Heather and I can be present. So today pretty much went on as an ordinary day. It all started with old hockey videos on the internet followed by Pancakes for breakfast. Lawson talked me into a game of MineCraft this morning, the snapshot had more new releases, mostly for the Nether but some of which, the ancient portals, spawn in the nether and the over world which makes sense being that the portals send you between the worlds... We ate fruit for lunch and got ready for an online soccer practice that I was a day out on... apparently it's tomorrow. We got back into his school work online but nothing seems to be there, going to have to ask about that... Threw a smoked pork shank in the oven for dinner and Heather made some cheese sauce for the veg. After dinner Lawson got back into the minecraft for a bit before coming and watching some idiot box with the old folks before bed. No motivation to get anything done around the house... so many projects that should be tended to... so much time... so much don't want to do it. Argh! Wait I did get something accomplished... I did tech support online today and got a friends printer working.