Day 125: Another Garbage Day... 4:45am... I finally get to sleep. 5am Heather's cricket choir starts to chirp... don't ask. She gets up and I take over the whole bed and go back to sleep, 15 minutes wasn't going to be enough to survive on. 8:15am the phone rings... damn I thought we killed oll the batteries in those pesky things. Heather calling to inform me about... umm... she might have told me something... honestly I'm drawing a blank. I think I got up... at least long enough to get the garbage packed up, well the obvious part of the garbage, I did forget a few things that were tucked away and planned for disposal. I still wasn't awake. I woke up the boy... he got up and took the bag to the side of the road and then crawled back into the basement to play video games. Breakfast... meh that can wait until my eyes open and I'm less likely to burn the house down. Eventually I got into the fridge, took out the eggs and got them to the counter, check, check, bread, toast, cheese... damn! Attacked by a box of Chicken Broth! Back! Back I say Damn it! It went back in the fridge and then attack again, and back and out again, then jumped out of my had and bit my ankle. I tried twice more to contain it in the fridge... Finally I was victorious... The Highlight of me Day. I fed the boy without burning the house down and considered it a victory as well. I went back to the computer, laid down in bed where I was safe from evil chicken products. Eventually Lunch time rolled around and I looked to feed the boy once again... hey there is a 1/4 water melon in the fridge... a spoon in the drawer... well it was a start... eventually Heather came home and saved me from the day. Sausages and cauliflower, an excellent idea... and afterwards some time at the park with the bat and ball and the mom and son... the dad took the time to plan out a new business venture, COVID Vacations for the Elderly. I take a photo of a person, ask them where they want to go on vacation, I photoshop them into a few pictures so it looks like they went... label them all for the time of the crisis and in a few years time when they are looking back at their photo albums or Facebook page they can see the photos and try real hard to remember what they did when they went on vacation then and let the foggy memory fill in the details... I already don't remember what I had for breakfast, what I did 2 years ago I have no idea... I look back in Facebook to find out... hey look I went to Hawaii, Heather did we go to one of the volcanoes on this trip I don't remember... SHE Tells me that it would only be appealing to people with memories like my own and there is no market for that... like there aren't 20 or 30 millions of old people out there with a memory like mine... I gave up the dream and and we watched a few things on the boob tube before going to sleep.

Day 124: Not going to say it, you all know what day it is... And another late start... Seems I started playing with WordPress the other night and increasing the boys web presence... I poked at that some more this morning before things got going. More pancakes... my kinda and the boys kind... I made them to go with his ice cream but by the time they were made he had stopped asking for ice cream for breakfast which is ok because he probably didn't need ice cream for breakfast, but you know it wasn't a bad idea. I got the kitchen cleaned up a bit, dishes into the machine and on early today, sure it wasn't 100% and it pained me to run a less than full load through because I'm cheap but I did it anyway because I wasn't sure it I'd have the energy to get back to it later. It was visitation day at the big house today, Lawson's friends came by and they went for a bike ride and sidekick came by for a coffee... the 2 events overlapped as I had to look for a bike for the boy to ride. I abandoned Sidekick leaving him to tend the coffee, it took longer than expected. Unfortunately the car was never unloaded the other day because it was a day of rest (no I'm not going there again), the same car that Heather took to work... so we were in Plan B Mode. I looked at Rodger's old bike, pumped up the tires, lubed the chain and brake lines got them working, it was a little big, I cut the post and moved the seat down, he tried it... still not a good fit. Plan C involved Sidekicks's child's old bike... repeated the spring bike thing, filled the tires, lubed things, got the brakes working, adjusted the seat as much as possible, his knees were around his ears. SideKick finished off the pot of coffee inside... Plan D, there is another bike in the rafters of the garage. I climb up onto the SuperBee and dig it out from under the kayak and you know what? The tires were flat, everything needed lube and the gears and the brake lines all needed to be sprayed with WD40 and worked in a bit to actually function properly... adjusted the seat and he finally headed out with his friends. I went back in for more coffee... well I didn't really need another coffee anyway. LOL While we chatted I took on the task of re-potting the the plants Lawson bought on Wednesday that we bought pots for on Friday... Sidekick pointed out that I could have bought pots from the dollar store cheaper and he was right but that would have been an extra stop since the dollar store doesn't have dirt and we were kinda in a 'Get shit done now' mode on Friday night. It's hard to get to town an hour away, find food to eat and get shopping done before everything closes due to modified business hours... yes modified business hours... makes perfectly good sense... restrict the hours of operation so there will be less time that people can spread the COVID... Duh, doesn't that put more people using the stores at the same time and increase the chances of... Ya well don't tell anyone. Where was I... Oh yes so what started as a Buy Mommy a Plant has turned into a major project... the little $3 pot of Hens and Chicks that was root bound and crying for help is now about 20 separate individuals in over a dozen pots... a few of the plant on the window got treated to a new place to live as well as the snake plant got spread out some more. On Sidekicks departure I headed outside to work on the trailer... yes I saved that for the hottest part of the day because I'm dumb. Fortunately, rewiring the trailer and putting new lights on it involved being under the trailer in the shade for a portion of the time so laying in the gravel was fun, however out of the 4 bolts I needed to take off to remove the old garbage lights, only none of them came off with the proper size wrench I took all that time tracking down. They were rusted on pretty good, not that they had been on there for years... just the metal from china they were made of was just good enough quality to hold them to the trailer but not good enough for them to ever be serviced. I got out the ViceGrips and wiggled it back and forth a few times and the bolts broke off, no the plastic holding the bolts on, the Chinese have plastic figured out... it was the metal bolts that gave way first. Heather got home as I was cleaning up... we went out to pick up some sour cream for the pulled pork sammiches we were having for dinner and I needed to check the mail box... I got a package, I'll open it tomorrow. But we did need to take a look for the boy... they had been gone longer than normal and it was time for dinner. The 3 were eventually located and sent home. Heather made the boy a banana split with his dinner and we settled in to finish watching that movie from the other day... I can see that being a new weekly series some time in the near future, likely in the can already. Then we finished off with a few episodes of Space Force... Kinda funny.

Day 123:  Sunday the day of rest... there is no part of religion I like more than the day of rest, unfortunately like many other things based in religion we tend to turn a bind eye to it and go about our day to day lives. Being out late the night before put me a little behind today, it was almost biblical... I slept in. Heather took the opportunity to assassinate the wildflowers in our front yard with the lawnmower. The heavens above wept for the loss, it rained and the only Devil's Paint Brush that survived the onslaught lived on the slippery crags of the hill in our front yard. LOL OK I'll stop before this degenerated to a blog about the spaghetti monster. Breakfast was lunch, I made pancakes for everyone to make up for the hour of the day. Heather embarked on making ice cream for the boy this time. Ours was good but he likes vanilla better than chocolate and gets more real ingredients than we do. The ice cream maker works very well and Lawson enjoyed a bowl of fresh ice cream with dinner. But a pre-dinner snack was in order for Lawson... I cooked up his fish he caught yesterday, he liked it almost as much as Salmon, which is impressive since that is one of his most Favorited foods. But the rest of the day just kinda bogged along as I was sore from the day before and the weather... We did manage to get our Chicken Wings in this weekend, going to need to buy more blue cheese, the last of it went into the dressing... hey google add that to my shopping list. Movie night ensued early today The Rundown and part of The Old Guard, we will get to the rest of that tomorrow when people are not sleeping through the middle of it.

Day 122: Saturday, what can be said about the weekends when they are just like any other day? Eventually made pancakes for breakfast. Then packing the car like we were going on vacation was in order... we were going to a friends house to actually visit people... gotta start developing those circles you know. Bikes, fishing stuff... baseball/gloves/bat, lawn chairs, booze, buns... we always have to take buns when we leave the house, pretty much a game changer, especially in the case of a BBQ... but even makes a stop at A&W or something like that better... So while I was packing and breakfasting Heather was fighting with the ice cream maker and making said buns... We looked outside and it was pouring out... chance of thunder showers... yup about 100% chance by the looks of it... fortunately we like where we live... continue packing the car... trust me the weather changes here far more than my underwear. The rain stopped... the temp leveled out just above 70... It turned into a perfect day. Not too hot. Not too wet... sure the fire smoked a little when a wet piece of wood when on... but not as much as it did when we tried to get rid of the fresh cut brush and leaves LOL, for a brief period you could send smoke signals to the neighbouring communities... but it worked well for mosquito control. The boys played together, rode their bikes... Lawson caught a fish... they played baseball, basket ball, there might have been some soccer but we turned our heads and tried not to notice that game.  A good time was had by all and we finally packed in the day and headed home well after 10pm... not saying we didn't have energy to eat some ice cream when we got home so... But no one lasted any longer than that.

Lawson Fishing

Day 121: Woke up late to the phone binging again... this time it was notifying me that someone in the area had just posted goalie gear for sale... $20 for 2 sets of goalie pads and a stick. The stick can go to the Novice Team, one set of pads were old but good for street hockey (ice hockey pads but a little past their prime and not the right style for his ice hockey). The other set of pads I'm keeping 32' CCM vintage mid 70's maybe, all leather... now I need a Jason Mask to go with them... LOL Adult Child games maybe? So I make plans to go to Timmins go to get in the car... no keys... the wife has all the keys in her purse just in case I decide to do something dumb like go out to buy hockey gear to add to the big pile of hockey gear. It didn't work... Sidekick stopped by for a few minutes late after noon (a trip to the bank gone amok, the only bank in town is only open Thursdays until 5pm, other days it closes at 3pm and is closed sat,sun,mon), he didn't make it out before the wife made it home. LOL. He booked it shortly there after and we went to Timmins to get some odds some ends and some goalie gear. Picked up some food at Pick of the Crop for dinner, then off to look for dirt, pots, garbage bags, bird food, booze, Timmies, stuff from shoppers, syrup without sugar, bacon... lord knows what else... and home by about 8pm. Boy got pinched playing video games after bed time and got his controller taken away, Heather worked on her blanket and I took photos of the pads I bought... See:

Leather Goalie Pads

Day 120: Terdsday 4:15am Ya this is what I get for falling to sleep before midnight. After an hour I gave up trying to get back to sleep and played a bit on the phone. After Heather left for work I turned on the computer, put on my glasses, looked at the screen, both of them... wait I only have one in this room... damn these glasses are filthy... I reach for another pair and then a 3rd pair... still 2 of everything... cleaned the classes... didn't fix the problem. After about 20 minutes everything went back to normal, meh what ever. Lawson surfaced from the basement and requested French Toast again... I think with the lack of school maybe he's missing the french a bit and... na, he just likes my french toast. After Breakfast I started working on Dinner... Pulled Pork... had a big shoulder in the fridge... only meat cheap enough to eat this week.... something must have gone wrong someplace COVID Cows and Chickens maybe. Being 2x the size of the instaPot the meat required some work before it went under pressure... butchered out the bones, skin, tendons, some of the fat, gave it a good rub with some spicy stuff I whipped up and dumped everything in the pot. The phone made a binging noise... Sidekick was messaging me about going to Cochrane with his quad. Now I know the Quad doesn't work, his or mine so I am picturing him with it half put on his truck and him stuck someplace under the fallen ramps, definitely the texts of a person about to try and do something dumb. I changed the wheel on the trailer and headed over... backed up to the quad and we rolled it on to my trailer (it's pretty low). Lost another trailer light... never fails, every time I use a trailer something goes wrong. I have another set I need to put on... a job for tomorrow. We drop him Quad off at the shop and head back to town. Heather made some flat breads to go with the Pork... kinda like pork tacos, a little cheese and sour cream, salsa... made for a fine dinner. After dinner the boy returned to the basement to play video games with his friends. I watched some YouTube (a live 24hr of Lemons thing)... by 8pm the rest of the house was asleep... 3:40 am now... bet I don't wake up early tomorrow damn it. LOL

Day 119: 5:45 am the wife is poking at me, time to get up... what did I agree to this morning... Ah, doctor day in Timmins. Why so early? Oh yes, I have to pick up some stuff from the Mennonites this morning and take it to the Airport and send it off to Joan... everyone knows Joan. Put her name on a package and put it on a plane or train and it will get to her, no address needed. Pretty sure she is at the end of the line and just collects all the boxes and packages at the end of the run further north... what's that you say, 'further north'? Yes there is further north... it goes Me, Joan, then Santa. Picked up the meat for Joan, picked up side kick and he followed in his car (had to take it in and get the trany checked out. Got to the transmission shop... it was gone... I called, He man where did you move your shop too? You aren't here anymore. Ya Other side of Timmins now, oh how I love driving across Timmins. Drop off the car, they weren't sure why... the cost of a transmission is about 10x the value of the car at this point... he was hoping it was something other than the transmission that was going and wanted to make sure the problem wasn't actually killing the trany. Anyway we left it there and went for his doctors appointment. Social distancing I stayed in the car again... fucking hot out today btw just in case you were wondering. It took forever... I was pressed for time and driving to the far side of Timmins twice wasn't helping but an extra hour at the doctors was burring me. Apparently he took a nap in the waiting room and missed them calling his name. DOH!!! We went to the BulkBarn ( they no longer have a servant for each customer ) you have to bag your own stuff now. Sidekick went in the place next door to get another doctors appointment while I shopped... then across the street to the big grocery store... Back across town to get the car again (a few sensors were not working, trany was fine) <<< on a side note the sensors mount to the front of the car, he no longer has that part of the car, an issue with running into snow >>> I left him there and booked it back towards home, gas, picked up and ice cream maker I bought on line last night in SoPo and then back to dump off groceries... the boy couldn't get ready fast enough... I pushed a peanut butter sandwich at him, we planned on stopping for food on the way to golf but there was no time now. I put the groceries in the fridge that needed to go there, the rest of the bags just got left on the floor, we ran out the door. Going to be 10 minutes late for his Tee Time. Got there, he couldn't remember the locker combination... there was a slight delay finding the key to the storage room to retrieve the lock crushing device. Once the clubs were free, Lawson got driven out to the second hole and joined his friends from Hockey... you never know when one of them are going to grow up and get signed by the Toronto MapleLeafs, hence the golf training. After golf we grabbed a few things at the market on the way home... we got there and there was no wife to be found... what gives? She should be home by now... that's like all week she has been late coming home... seems to me they are going to owe her some time off at this rate. 4:30pm Waiting... Who's going to bring me my grog?!? 4:32 Heather gets home and interrupts this post... Still didn't get my grog... too damn hot today, Air conditioner in the car Heather took to work is beat... she hot and beat... we are all beat... Heather managed some food for the boy but we were not inspired to cook for ourselves tonight... I cut up some strawberries, she made some whipped cream... there done... dinner. It seems I ate that and feel to sleep... lord knows what they did for the rest of the evening. I dare say they likely followed my lead shortly there after.

Day 118: A real garbage day... yes the garbage made it out today... even the woodpecker made it out... don't ask. Taped over the recycle symbol on the new 'garbage' can so the garbage men wouldn't get confused. Lawson drove it to the curb and then we foraged for breakfast. He got the last slice of banana bread and what was left of the fruit... I got a square of chocolate to hold me over until I got to the farm to get some more eggs. Still not an overly mobile day an I caught up on some racing events I was apparently years behind on. After the end of the hot dogs for lunch Lawson played with his friends on line while I went out and worked on the car... we now have 2 semi drivable cars but they are both schedule to go into the shop over the next few weeks to have some odds and ends patched up along with a new set of tires for the Subaru. Sidekick came over for a coffee but didn't make it out the door before Heather rolled in... even as late as she was. Seems the ministry came by today for a little surprise inspection and as the new heath and safety rep there were meetings all day she needed to participate in... even only being on the job for a week it seems she blended in well... no one got thrown in jail for any types of violations and then they all got happy face stickers from the government. Or something like that. I had cued up a recipe for some chicken dish... had the chicken out and ready to go and set Heather to work fricasseeing things while I cleaned out the car from the 'fishing' trip and took the summer rims down to the garage to get new rubber put on them. It was a late dinner... Lawson played a few more games and we all kinda ran out of energy.

Day 117: Well the 2nd to the last shoe fell... the tournaments they were trying to reschedule have been canceled and the are sending back the registration fees...  Well it will be nice to have the money back but would have rather seen the boy play a few more tournaments... he definitely would have enjoyed playing. Yup that's how Mondays go... Only 2 eggs left... the bread went moldy so no french toast... Lawson got 2 egg sandwiches on those buns I made him the other day then followed that up with another hot dog on yet another bun for lunch... I think he likes homemade bread stuff. Today was a non anything day... it was spent in bed recouping... played with some photos on the computer... didn't even have the energy to play games... just randomly poked at the keyboard from time to time doing mindless stuff. Heather got home late with a list of complaints about the car, I had started dinner for the boy but left that in her hands as I went out to assess the situation... Mostly dirt and parts we didn't need... I took the offensive noise making parts off the Mazda... if I had a nickle for every part that came off that car without having to turn a wrench... I could buy another new Mazda. Going to have to order more parts to go back on it... cars are not doing well this week. When I did what I could for it I came back in and helped make dinner for the big people. Shrimp, noodles and Heather made some fat bombs... wait I'm going to go get another right now. Or 2... they were stuck together. LOL The weekend must have been hard on us, people went horizontal and eyes fell shut. Lawson took tonight's photo, one of the things I played with today to remember the first fishing trip of 2020.

Rod in the wilderness

Day 116: Fuck COVID... It's been 1/3 of a Year damn near now... I see we can have Social Circles now of 10 people and not worry about Social distancing in your Social Circle... all 10 people have to have only the same 10 people so get in early before you find out your friends don't love you as much as you thought they did. In your social circle you will be able to do things like touch each other and hug each other and... fuck I can't think of 10 people I have touched in the last year pre-COVID now we are all squaring off toe to toe in some kind of 10 person circle jerk... and this Social Distancing thing is starting to get more enticing. Meh what ever, let me know when it's over and I will read the book. Rolled out of bed and hit the floor running... out I rolled out of bed and hit the floor. Made it to the kitchen and got breakfast for the boy and I... packed the car with the fishing stuff and headed off to meet SideKick. We knocked on the door and woke him up... obviously fishing up here is not like down south... fishing down there is about done at 9am... here we are still looking for car keys. Get the boat loaded up, got some gas... first for the boat then went back for some in the car... I should get some new tires... these are starting to look like the ones on heather's old saturn when she worked at Timmys and was in school full time. We get to the Lake... Lake Ford... not my choice... not a ford kinda guy... hook up the motor... plug in the gas line... it starts rough... runs a bit... starts to cough a little heading away from the dock... runs a bit... starts to cough more... and smoke... ya the smoke was a bad sign... it cacked... No we didn't even bother trying to restart it... it had just become a rudder. Got out the canoe Paddles... back in my wheel house unfortunately, OK where are we heading, damn thing was shorter than the canoe by a little but twice as wide and paddled like a garbage scow. When we got where we were going I took a break and untangled the fishing rods. I took 4. I'm sure he was wondering why the hell I needed 4 for me and the boy so I told him... kids, you know... they get the lines all tangled up, it's just easier to hand them another one and keep fishing... so one was for me and the other 3 so I didn't have to deal with any mess the boy made. He explained to me that some kids are pretty good and don't have those kind of problems (today he was correct). We fished for a bit. All was good... Lawson had it down pat, no tangled lines, a few snags but good knots kept everything in tact until we could get the boat over the snag and free the lures with a little tug. We move to another spot on the lake. I look over and Sidekick has a rat's nest of line at the face of the reel... the line was in the water, his lure just floating around out there somewhere... I didn't say anything at first, I was sure it wasn't a big deal, something he would get worked out I'm sure... soon after I pasted him SPARE ROD #1... LOL he took it gratefully and tossed his in the bottom of the boat to be dealt with at some future date. Now I tie loops on the end of my lines... I hook my stuff to the loop... makes changing leaders, hooks, all kinds of setup quick and easy... apparently he didn't like my knot. Had to take it out and tie it some other way. At this point I would like to say that the same knot on both mine and Lawson's line held all day, through multiple snags and we didn't loose even an inch of line all day, which I have to say is pretty impressive fishing beside the beaver lodge. So he gets hooked up and casts out, maybe once or twice, gets a hit, then nothing... yup, reeled in nothing, no fish, no lure, no leader, no knot... Hey what happen to that new knot you tied in the line? LOTFLMAO... ok so he only lost one lure all day, still not too shabby. The day progressed from cool and almost raining to clear and too fucking hot to fish, the boy didn't care, he fished on. A bit after noon we took a break for a quick shore lunch... gathered some fallen crap wood and twigs stuff we could break with our hands (didn't even have a knife we each assumed the other always had one and I grabbed the wrong tackle box so), made a small fire to cook the hot dogs on... fire building skills in the wild proved adequate, none of us will freeze to death out there before we get eaten by the bears. The Dragon Flies gathered and kept the other bugs at bay which was kinda nice. After lunch we tried for a few more hours but had no luck, too hot, no fish... all sleeping in a cool hole out in the middle someplace trying not to move too much laying in front of the air conditioner eating Cheetos in their underwear no doubt... I don't know... but they were definitely not interested in anything we were doing. I started paddling back to the dock... crap we went a long way... eventually we made it back to the car... dragged the boat out of the water with the truck and flopped it back on the deck and strapped it down. Went back to the house for a drink. Heather put on a pot of coffee and waited for us to bring in the fish and fry up dinner... Tuna Sandwiched... more of the buns perished in the making of dinner. We went to sidekick place and helped him take the boat off the Truck... Heather had to help... sidekick and I were spent, were no longer at the point where we could function properly and the girl had to help. We went home and packed it in... she brought Advil and beverages... see she does love me more. LOL... Ouch... going to be a rough night, hope I don't need to get up and pee any time soon. Ouch.

Lawson Fishing