Day 204: Turdsday, the day when you realize it's not Friday at about noon, which really sucks ass because the work week just go a day longer. I woke up to the phone making binging noises... Apparently it does that now whenever someone sells hockey gear in Timmins... But no it's not tracking my searches.. lol. Found a pair of goalie skates for the boy the next size up... Lots of good deals on skates in good condition now... Lots that were bought last year that only have a few months on them due to three COVID shutdown and the fact that kids feet grow fast at this age... Might as well take advantage of the other deals, since we are in the same boat... Anyone looking for a size 3 goalie skate? We will have some shortly that only have a few months on them. Had some breakfast and pushed the boy out the door. Let's see what to do today... I open the new knee brace I got yesterday at shoppers... Big wire springs have toran through the fabric are are sticking out the side, looks like it will be going back. The day went on, every thing I touched broke or blew up, at which point I would change to a different project... Cleaning the kitchen involved taking 4 sets of golf clubs out of the kitchen... You say hey Rod, there is only 3 people living in the house isn't there? Yes yes there is... The club's went into to the basement and when I got there hockey gear needed picked up... Oh which reminds me, Lawson asked me to put a fresh set of blades in his skates, so I went to do that. I couldn't tell which was left or right... You say here Rod, I thought it didn't matter aren't they both the same? Well no not really... We get them sharpened with an offset cut making the inside edge razor sharp and the outside edge more flat... It's a goalie thing. I assume they are just sharpened wrong (something that has never happen there before)... I but then in the skates anyway and they don't fit... They are about 2 sizes too small... Doh!!! I call the shop to find out who has Lawson's blades... There can only be about 2 or 3 other people that own that size and type of skates... I left them until the weekend to get things sorted back out. Went back to the bedroom to sort out a pile of crap beside the bed... Found more unopened letters that needed to be added to the paperwork. Eventually boy got home and I gave up. Heather finally made it home and we made some pumpkin soup for dinner... It was very good. Lawson had his last online training session with the lady from the Olympic women's Canadian team... More for players but it didn't matter. While Lawson was engaged with the training Heather and I had to refrain from using the internet... Slow connection, it can't do more than one thing at a time. We watched a movie afterwards and Heather tied things together in knots again.

Day 203: Humpday... I'm going to make new names for all the days of the week. Heather left for work at 4am, under ground training that she has already taken but was never documented... Gotta love that. The boy and I got up much after that and did the routine again, I had breakfast made and set out his lunch before he made it down stairs. I grabbed a shower while he ate, eventually we both left the house. He went to see school, I went to pick up sidekick, back to Timmins for the Weekly Dr's appointment. Not much interesting happening in town today... picked up a hockey gear bag and some odds and ends... Got a cell phone range extender... do you remember when you use to be able to buy a little antenna and plug it into your phone to get better range? Ya like everything else those days are over... a sizable chunk of change with get you a box to put on a pole on your roof, and aim it at the nearest cell tower, a cable that you run 50' down into the house where it attaches to another box that plugs in the wall for more power and also another antenna transmitter/receiver thingy that the phone communicates with... yes all this to replace a 3 inch long antenna that 2 face taped to the back of your cell phone...

Continued: Got home just in time, boy walked in the house shortly after. got him fed early so things had a chance to settle before hockey practice. Can Heather an I have eggs for dinner... Apparently we can and did. Lawson and I headed up to Iroquois Falls. Another practice, not sure if the coaches are aware of the COVID issues and how it relates to hockey as the kids were man handling each other to the point where penalties should have likely been given out in regular hockey, with the new COVID rules they aren't event supposed to be touching each other... Not point practice regular hockey, I doubt we are going to get much beyond COVID rules this season. Trying to come up with some good strategies for drawing penalties out of the whole deal... Pretty sure if the goalie and a player get into a shoving match in the crease the player is going to get the penalty, let's see what happens. By the time we got home Heather was sleeping. Shortly there after so we're we.

Day 202: Garbageday... I should make my own calendar, Tuesday is just so yesterday... Well n it is by an hour now. Heather was gone by the time the boy and I got up and ate... He is still on that scrambled egg and toast kick... Not sure if there is something wrong with the boy or what. Managed to get the trash to the side of the curb... Well the dirt patch we call a curb. Then the boy was off to school. Ah quite time... I got my shit together and head out the door... We needed more eggs. Mail, I should check the mail while I'm out... Ok goalie hockey cards came in the mail... Front looks good but the back looks like a project that a 3rd grader tried to pull off. Meh... And while at the post office I sent off those packages that needed stuffed into the mail. Ok of to get the eggs... Damn back home first... How can I go out to get eggs and forget to take back the cartons. After fetching a few dozen of them, piling them in the car I was off to the farm again... Got eggs. On the way home I also stopped by the store to pick up a few of odds and ends. Made it in just in time to do not a fuck of a lot more before the boy got home. Early dinner for Lawson... Hockey tonight... Good to let things digest a bit before hitting the ice. Heather got home shortly there after and we made some big Mac salad for our selves. Plowed out through the door and into the car to get to Iroquois falls for h hockey practice. I went in to watch tonight... He did not bad, still a little slow, almost like he doesn't want to be out there, well during the skating part anyway...during the 2nd half of the practice when he started playing in net he did perk up a bit. When we got home around 8ish Heather was already sleeping... She is going into work early tomorrow... Don't ask how you can go in more early, that part of the day is the non functional part as far as I see it. 4:15 am the alarm is set for... Argh. We (the boy and I) tried to be quiet as to not wake her... So tired... Going to join the horizontal movement, or lack there of. Can't function, I keep falling to sleep typing this... Maybe I should just leave it and edit it in the morning... Zzzzzzz

Day 201: Seriously, another Monday? Why? Got the boy off and running, fed, out the door... Then went back to bed. The leg is in bad shape, not very stable, I keep falling down... Might be time to look into getting a brace or something... Maybe Wednesday when I go into town... I stayed there, in bed looking at the ceiling for the better part of the day. Hurt myself 3x just trying to roll over... You know it's going to be a rough day when... Eventuality the boy got home. Followed shortly after by the wife... The day played out in the usual manor, dinner, Lawson's video games, Heather's knot tying, and a few episodes of what ever that show is we are watching... Doh! I give up... I'll try again tomorrow.

Day 200:   Special Edition... I have planned to do some retrospective thing on the progression of the perilous dilemma we are in... however I've failed to keep up on simple things like where people are dying today, what they are dying from... and if anyone out there actually knows what the fuck is going on. We find out later in the episode that the 2 chuckle moneys that planned the whole thing died in a tragic car accident the day after the 1st victim was exposed and this roller-coaster has no pilot, no fail safe plan... and no end in sight. Pretty sure you will all be able to check out the specific stats some place in the future for what ever specifically you are looking for... How would the internet get it scientific proof of everything that ever was if you couldn't look for specific stats to quote to back up what ever rant you happen to be on at the particular moment in time. The whole batman movie intro to this post it almost starting to sound as creditable as anything 'the man' is bringing to the table as feasible 'facts and knowledge'... Pretty sure as grim as it sounds, we are just pretty much screwed. We got up early and Heather broke into 'girl speak', she kept telling me about how she was going to make sausages and omelettes for breakfast... and pondering on what to put in them and what the boy might like... this went on for some time and as usual her mother phone in the middle of the process. She always calls while we are making/eating a meal... I mean daily... seriously chronically a colossal pain in the ass... what is this all encompassing compulsion to interrupt us constantly? Likely something important like the $4 shoes she bought at GiantTiger, sorry, no... the 8 pairs of shoes she bought for $4 each at GiantTiger to go with her new jeans she bought to wear to her 'business casual' workplace... not really sure how jeans and deck shoes are business casual... shit might as well grab a tube top from the GT Boutique while you are there to complete the ensemble... fuck where was I? Yes my mother-in-law is an idiot. Oh yes the phone call... I left Heather to the call and awaited breakfast. It never came. The phone call ended, the cantankerous old hag likely got too far out of line and Heather needed to do something "important" again... great way to end a call... sorry talk to you later, the house is on fire, I need to go put that out now. 10:30 or so I was getting a little hungry and asked when the bountiful feast was going to present itself... not to be pushy or anything. Apparently she didn't actually want to make breakfast today, what she was trying to do was let me know what she wanted for breakfast, not that she was actually going to make it. Well damn it woman! Had you just asked 4 hours ago we would have been on to lunch by now. Omelettes and sausages is what a 15-20 minute job tops? Hell I can even pull off a pot of coffee in that time. Breakfast has got to be one of the easiest meals to pull of... I'm not a morning person, and if I can handle it every morning, it can't be that difficult, well at least not as difficult as figuring out "GirlSpeak". Shit, I'm only at breakfast, I'm going to need to break this into a few post today. So after Brunch we chilled... honest it was going to be a productive day but... I tried to get paperwork for Lawson Ringette practice all taken care of, full medical report, along with detailed list of your comings and goings for the past 2 weeks, soon they are going to be doing testing before you can get into any public space. So I filled out the forms online and then was notified to bring a pen so we can sign more papers when we get there... I see a pattern forming... day 100: Toilet Paper... day 200: something to cover your ass. I wonder how much COVID insurance is worth? Got a late lunch into everyone... go figure there was leftover pizza from yesterday, who-da-thunk-it? Lawson and I went into Iroquois Falls Hockey/Ringette gear in tow. They unlocked the doors, I forgot my pen in the car because I thought we had actually filled in everything online, which didn't seem to be the case... 10 minutes before ice time 4 or 5 deep back in line, the goalie stands with no gear on. Most of the kids can come dress, they are local, there gear isn't very bulky... but there is no way I'm putting him in the car in goalie gear and expecting the seat belt to contain anything lord forbid we get in an accident (which is far more likely than a COVID attack up here at this point. Wait off on a tangent again... We get in, get processed and get a chair. Now Lawson can get dressed himself but complete goalie gear in 4 minutes it something you need help for... we have the job split up well and are both typically working on something all the time. He's one of the first ready to hit the ice. Now he goes out and practices, does some skating with the team but as they get into player specific stuff Lawson is pulled from the herd and one of the coaches starts taking shots on net so Lawson has something more goalie related to do. I'm sure Lawson appreciated that. Oh the new Otny cage on the helmet sucks. LOL He can't get the water bottle in the cage to get a drink it just hits the extra bars and goes all over the place... he can't reach his glasses to push them back in place or clean the snow off them... he had to come to the bench on a few occasions and remove the helmet completely to get everything in order. Going to have to have him remind the ref to clean off the rings every-time they pick them up... hard too see with a face full of ice and snow. Hit Timmies on the way home so the boy could get a smoothie, then head south again towards home. 5:30pm We get in the driveway, rain was on the way... we decided to finish up some of the cleaning outside before going in for dinner. Had a few tarps to fold up, wood to relocate, sawdust to bag up... easier to do before everything gets wet... even easier to do before everything gets wet and then freezes. Home-made-soup and samiches for dinner... on fresh baked buns... got the slicer out to do the meat and cheese... Mmmm.... oh, sorry, more diet food, forgot to take a photo. Afterwards boy hit the tub... Picture day tomorrow you know, don't need the vapours from hockey smell rising up in the photos. Heather and I watched another episode of what ever that show is called again tonight and then packed it in for the night. By the Way... the cell phone does not make a suitable camera for sports photography, in low lighting conditions and especially from the designated seating dictated by the facility. I'm going to have to ask them to clean the glass at least in that one small section, I'd do it but it's the ice side that's dirty.

Lawson AKA GoaliePow in Net - Ringette

Day 199: Saturday... back at band camp. Heather got up, feed herself and the boy then head off to Timmins for band practice. They are down to 10 people max at each session and even the instruments have to wear face masks... ok not face masks but nylons over the noisy end where spit might come out. I eventually made it into the kitchen... apparently Heather had also made some banana bread for Lawson before she left. I made Lawson some lunch and then started on dinner for the whole family... Pizza, damn I hate this diet food. Now I don't like to make Lawson eat what we are eating all the time... some things are just better with gluten... not much but there are a few things that really can't be matched. Pizza crust is one of them. And really how long does it take to make a ball of proper dough. And then we don't have to listen to him complain about the topping... Lawson, what do you want on your pizza? What do you mean just pepperoni? What kind of limp ass answer is that? Ya, I didn't bother questioning it... I just made him a pepperoni and cheese pizza. Boring but I guess he liked it anyway. Ours get the GF crust, mostly coconut flour, but not too bad all things considering... the real point of the pizza is the toppings. You need at least 3 or 4 types of meat, what ever is in the veggie drawer... cheese and then more cheese... and once you get the toppings 4 times the thickness of the crust you are ready to go to the oven. See photo below. After dinner we went back to the idiot box and started watching a new series... a spin off an old Mel Gibson movie series... give me a minute I will think of the name of it... or a day, maybe tomorrow. OK only 3 episodes while Heather made more knots in things... this thing it starting too look like a hat of some sort... a beanie maybe? I don't know... likely a good idea to just go to sleep.

Pizza (Keto / GF)

Day 198: TGIF - Too sore to sleep last night, saw the wife off to work and then passed out for about an hour before the alarm went off to get Lawson ready for school. Breakfast Lunch and out the door, he had to wear green and white today, some francophone thing. I worked on some paperwork that was looming over my head, couldn't thing proper, it didn't go well before I gave up. Couldn't do much of anything, tried to work in the basement, no dice, kept dropping things and tripping, I made a wise choice and went to a room that was more safe. Played a game of pool on the phone and that wasn't even successful... I waited for everyone to get home. Had dinner, watched some idiot box and then crashed... too tired to even write this much.

Day 197: I will have to soon reference back to day 100 when I switched from full words to numbers at the beginning of each post... I think I promised to make it even shorter on day 200. I will move that to the things to do list. Morning routine and got the boy off to school. Sat down on the bed and the wife called... she made words at me, apparently I lost another hour and hadn't recovered yet... yes words of some form, kinda hoping they weren't in any order or important... maybe I should ask her now what the call was about... na, that would be like poking a hungry bear with a baguette... and not a long one either... one of those deficient sub par ones. Likely to loose a limb you are.   Sidekick messaged a few minutes latter... the message was more simple and easy to figure out even at that time of the morning ( I have mentioned I'm not a morning person right? ) The message was: "Coffee 16 minutes" I pushed the thumbs up button and proceeded to the coffee maker. It's making funny noises... gotta clean it out some day soon. Straightened out some billing matters over coffee, sent invoices to the people who pay the bills, got the receipt book in order so he doesn't get taxed 4 times by the government for something he only sold once. All in order, Check Check Check. Which reminds me, I went to the post office when he left and there was a check in the mail... sure is was about 1/100th of the size of the bills that came in that same load of mail, but what can you do? Took the check and went for groceries... ya wasn't enough to cover those either. Bought ground beef, it was selling for a price I used to look at and think Holly Shit I'm not paying that much for garbage meat... Which coincidentally is the exact same price as I got it today which has become: WOW Shit Look, what a deal, I'm going to buy a whole $50 log of this shit before the price goes up again. I went home and put away the giant log of meat, I pushed it in bags a froze it. Argh, brakes need fixed still... going to back the car up to the garage, Oh wait Project X is still barfed all over the driveway. I go out and start putting the crap in the driveway away... it took all afternoon. Wait I found a lightbulb, I put that in the light hooked to the motion sensor outside in the driveway... I fixed the door so the wind doesn't just blow open... a new door handle and a lot of reshaping the door with a baby sledge hammer. Not pretty but it works. Lawson got home and help with the cleaning process moving things from the driveway into the back yard. I raked up the driveway some, still needs a lot of work to make things flat again but it needs to be done before the snow comes. Heather got home... for some reason she had dreams of pancakes on the way home, with chocolate chips and pecans smothered in butter and syrup... man this diet food is really getting to me. I made her dreams come true tonight... the boy wanted Kraft Dinner instead so that's what he got. I hooked him up down stair for his online hockey skills course tonight, he seems to enjoy it. While he was doing that I had a few choice words for Vistaprint, I will just leave it at they have no way of accepting money for orders from people who have actual money... you currently need to give your money to a credit card company and then they need to give it to a company that does their web page and then the web page people give it to them and then they likely give it to the people in the sweat shop in Guam... BUT they don't take cash, or etransfer, or paypal (or any other online currency)... Fuck maybe I could go down to the store and buy a hand full of gift cards, scratch off the code and give Apu in customer services the numbers over the phone... I don't know... So basically they don't want my money so Fuck them. Boy finished up, got ready for bed and we all packed it in for the night.

Day 196: Happy Hump Day!!! Getting a jump on today's update I started this post at 12:05... 5 minutes into the day... still not much to report on yet... oh ya, COVID still sucks. OK now back to yesterday. LOL Kind of a post post report. Did I mention COVID sucks? Yes apparently that part of the day was already noted. Breakfast routine went off as normal, eggs toast bacon, I made him a sandwich for lunch... on a grilled cheese kick this week by the looks of it. And all of that yummy lunch meat in the fridge and wanting nothing to do with it. He packed the rest and was out the door on time. Couldn't find shit or get anything working for me after that... Wallet, ownerships, insurance slip, money... ya couldn't find any of that stuff... it was in the bathroom on the counter in plain sight, likely looked right at it 5 times... didn't help... I gave up looking and left without it. Sidekicks house to pick him up for our weekly visit to Timmins to see the doctors. No money, no cards, not much you can do so it was likely going to be a short day. Off to Canadian Tire to return a jack that didn't work that had never been used... I had no hope that they would do anything about it, honestly not my problem but if Sidekick wasn't to try, by all means I'm not going to stop him... I waited in the car. No receipt, no luck, maybe try again next week. BestBuy, needed a cell phone range extender because we live in the middle of butt fuck nowhere... needed to be ordered. OK how about a usb cable... I may have enough change in the ashtray for that. Yup. Groceries? Nope, not without money... we head home, stop by Timmies on the way out. Sidekick buys me a coffee because I can't find my wallet. Then the farm to drop off the egg cartons that I forgot at home... Batting 1000. Dropped off Sidekick so he could get back to work and then head back home myself. Took the crap I had remembered back into the house. I sit down and go to hook up my battery and cell phone thingy I bought the USB cable for, I open the box... and there is nothing in side. I text Melanie and bitched at her about it. Must have been stolen at the store, no point stealing the box, you would just have to throw that out anyway, might as well let someone at the store do that... Fuck, Some people are just complete pieces of shit. Let's see, what's for dinner... seems to be leftovers in the fridge. I make up some more meatballs to supplement the leftovers... not like the meat I used to make the leftovers wasn't leftovers itself... it just hadn't officially been to the table yet. Lawson gets home... then Heather gets home... we have a great feast that only taste like the inside of a refrigerator a little bit... I guess every night can't be steak and lobster. Off to Hockey, Lawson was back on the ice tonight, I actually left Heather home and stayed and watched for the practice, even took a little video with the phone. We will see how that worded out later. I would bitch about the confined space they have us watching from but not like it's going to help... I need to remember to bring my new glasses so I can see him way down the far end of the rink... from what I could make out... I think he played in net, he was the only one with out a practice jersey... I don't recall why he never got one of those... Might be because they didn't have any goalie cut jerseys. Afterwards we packed up and head out. In the parking lot one of the board members approached me to let me know I would need to transfer the web site and pages to the company that was previously doing them... I could only assume I wasn't doing the job for free anymore, as a matter of fact I had thought of that weeks ago and had already transferred everything back out of my name, ball was in their court BUT my guess is the other company hasn't done anything with the transfer yet because no one from the group has paid him to do the job yet. No so much on the ball. Made it home, the boy checked in with his cronies online for a bit before heading off to bed.