#9. or, operation clean sweep

  The plan was devious. Clever as hell, but devious. Bordering on child endangerment.
  In an effort to get the "lets get into shape before holidays plan" back onto the tracks after being completely derailed by the holiday onslaught of chocolates, baking, and gravy, something drastic needed to be done. So, in a series of clandestine meetings over a number of evenings, it was decided that, through a multitude of correspondence in coded invisible ink, we would put Operation Clean Sweep into action. I got to wear a trench coat. Well, .......actually we just talked about this for a couple minutes before we fell asleep one night, but i think the spy thing adds a bit of intrigue? Anyways, the plan was to gather all of the baking and chocolates that we could find (by then, i had already drank the gravy out of a tall glass with a straw.) and stack them all at the end of the cupboard. The children, would not be able to resist this temptation and have it all cleaned up before the day was over. I'm pretty sure, this would have worked even better if we had actually told them that they were not allowed to have any of the stuff, lest they ruin their supper, guess you can't think of everything? There was however, a fatal flaw in this plan. Somehow, i overlooked the fact that i have absolutely zero will power and now am faced with a pile of baking on the end of the cupboard that i feel obliged to dig into every time i wander past. Operation Clean Sweep has in fact become Operation Put as Much Sugar into my Body as Humanly Possible until i Die of Terminal Diabetes....OPMSBHPDTD! (that's a rather convoluted acronym?) To top it off, we're gong swimsuit shopping tonight and there's a plate of left over cabbage rolls in the fridge that keep whispering to me. I need to mix in a salad before it's too late.


...............i hope that i can find a swim suit that makes me look like Mathew Mcconaughey, but that might be asking a bit too much.

#8. or, of cows on ice and grey hair

   It is never a good thing when it rains in the middle of winter. Well, not when it is supposed to be -20 degrees Celsius with a couple feet of snow. The roads turn to ice and driving gets ridiculous. It isn't any good for cows either. Hard hooves have no traction on a sheet of ice, and they don't tip-toe so well. Imagine putting pots on your feet before heading out the door yesterday morning. Glad it warmed up a bit in the afternoon to break the ice up some.

  I got a hair cut today. The pile of grey hair on the floor when i was done was rather disturbing. Somehow, i've gone completely past dignified and well on my way to rather old looking. I think i'm going to dye my hair. For some reason, i've been resisting this. Maybe my fear is that when i start down the road to the "dark hair" side, there will be no turning back. Thing is, if i wait too long, i'm going to look goofy as hell being a pretty solid grey one day then youthful brown the next. Also, i think i need to do this while i actually have a hairline. It does however, seem to be holding on better than i expected. I'm only 43, i think i'm in better shape than i was when i was at 33, yet that guy looking back from the mirror looks 53. Most days i feel pretty young, i don't think it would hurt to look the part?

  I'm taking a bit of ribbing cause i want to pack 4 pairs of footwear for vacation, add that to the fact that i've been considering hair dye is making me feel a little less manly today. I may have to go do some welding or crush some empty beer cans to get my man-card back?  (I am sure there are some very feminine beer can crushing women welders out there and i mean no disrespect, but i am sure it will do the trick for me.)

#7. or, um....just #7 because i couldn't come up with a title

   Yesterday, i was wandering about the house looking for my wife. As i entered the bedroom, my heart rate immediately sped up. There, casually laying on the bed, cover tantalisingly thrown back, was..........
a suitcase, partly loaded! We are officially packing for vacation and that excites me. I did a little salsa dance. Not any salsa dance that someone from Latin America might actually recoginize, but a salsa dance based on about five hours of classes we took a couple years back. (trust me, it was glorious.) Now, it was wise planning on her part to not start any packing until after Christmas. The stress of both Christmas and vacation packing quite possibly would of killed me. I love vacation, especially tropical vacation. I wish i had a white linen suit, with a panama hat, i could pull that off. Except i worry about being mistaken for a Colombian drug lord and getting taken out by machine gun fire.

  Today i put the LED cablights on my truck that i got from my boys for Christmas and i must say they look spectacular, then i took Wyatt, the youngest, to the city to cash in his Wal-Mart gift card for a hockey glove and blocker This surprised me a bit considering he spends most of his time being Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, scoring the hat trick goal to eliminate the Calgary Flames from the playoffs? I guess even budding superstars need to take a turn in the net once in a while?

  ........i apologize for not having an adequate title, i even slept on it hoping some brilliance would seep into my head as i slept......alas, no brilliance..... sorry.

#6. or, new skates....old feet

  I got skates last Christmas. Not last Sunday, last year, and not actually skates, but a gift certificate for the sole purpose to purchase new skates with. So, i procrastinated, and i think that it was probably mid February before i actually got around to picking some out. Anyways, brand new skates, unused until last week. That's when the grade 6's went to the arena for Christmas skating. My kid said i should come, he's been after me since last Christmas......last year. So i dusted off my brand new, unused skates and off i went, to skate with grade 6's.
  Now, i used to play hockey, fun type hockey, first to 10 wins hockey, then next goal wins hockey. The hockey rural kids play on a frozen pond by the headlights of your dads truck hockey. I wasn't good, but i wasn't talentless. I could skate for hours, a long time ago....when i was young. My kid is like that, loves hockey. We put together a little rink on the dugout. It isn't much, but it might as well be Rexal Place to him.

                                                                                             (blatant visual aid #2)

 
 He goes as often as he can, i've gone twice since Christmas. I don't remember being so lousy at puck handling, somehow, i've lost the ability to turn to the right, and my feet hurt like hell when i woke up this morning. Hockey might be inherently Canadian but nobody said anything about talent. It's going to take alot of practice but.......i'm a gamer.

      .............i can't wait for the baking to be gone. Terrible planning for a guy with no will power to be on a diet through Christmas.

#5. or, i miss babies.

  hey guys, Merry Christmas. As usual, i had a great day yesterday. Made out quite well i think. Two of my favourite gifts: A particularly stylish scarf, and my brand new Gerber, Bear Grylls edition survival knive. It's like the Red Ryder BB gun of dads gifts! Fire starter flint in the sheath, holes in the handle in case you need to fashion a spear, sharpener on the back, signal whistle on the lanyard, everything you could possibly think of plus survival tips from Bear himself tucked into a tidy little pouch hidden in the sheath. Pretty damned awesome. I had quite the time imagining myself , alone in the woods, survival dependant on only my wits and my trusty Gerber, Bear Grylls edition survival knife.....all the while, looking stylish as hell in my fashionable scarf!
  Anyways, this Christmas turned out to be the season of the babies. Unexpectedly, on the 23rd we decided to have three of our nieces over when their holiday plans fell though. We had a pretty good time, i'm glad it happened. Two of them have kids. Hayden, is a little ball of fire, running about and into everything. It was great. I miss seeing those little guys, anything could be interesting to them plus their little toddler run is priceless. B.G., baby Gaige (just Gaige to his parents) still fits into that nook in your arm.I spent the better part of the afternoon cuddling him to perfection. Seemingly, i have a knack for babies, which you might not expect by looking at me, being the gruff manly man that i am. To top it all off, we also got word via facebook (which i love and secretly hope for a lucrative endorsement deal from Mark Zuckerberk) that my nephew Curt and his new wife Andrea are now expecting as well. Grand news indeed!.
  As the last of my kids leave that wonderful "dependant on you" stage to turn into brooding smelly teenagers (they're all boys, they're smelly!) i kind of find myself missing those little fellows. However, i am more than happy to hand off for the dirty diaper change and fill them with sugar to send them home screaming with their parents. I did my turn at that. But i'm gonna be one awesome Grandpa.......but not just yet.  :)


    ...........i wonder if the guys that make the Gerber, Bear Grylls edition survival knife are the same Gerber that makes the baby food?

#4. or, Sorry if i didn't say hi when we passed on the street.

  As of last night, all my gifts are wrapped. That puts me in at about 30 hours ahead of schedule. I can't remember the last time that i didn't have to wrap my gifts on Christmas Eve. I must be in a zone. I'm not the most tidiest of wrappers but i do like to make the effort.(ken's blatant visual aid #1)

 Was a little saddened to find the drawer of bows in our wheelie bottomed wrapping station thing down to the ones that don't go with anything. Olive metallic green, and burgundy. I had to get creative and do that pull the ribbon across the scissors and get the coily squiggle, which turned out well, i think.

  I've been trying to be a little more cheery than usual this season, tossing out the Merry Christmas's willy nilly, here and there. Yesterday, i passed an old friend on the street. My head was preoccupied with going to reschedule my tanning appointment and didn't even realise we'd passed until i was well down the street. I turned around and went back but she was gone. I hadn't seen her in quite some time and it would have been nice to say hi. So, sorry, if i came across as rude, it was just me not being aware of what was happening around me. We'll have coffee sometime.....with Baileys.  :)


  ......i discovered the spell checker, it makes me look smarter than i really am. 

#3. or, how the VCR stole my Christmas mojo

  When i was a kid, Christmas was a magical time. I mean, way more magical than now. Every new thing that came along was a thing of wonderment.The toys were made to inspire imagination. Not based on a movie or a video game, but things like G.I. Joe, and cowboy and Indian play sets. (which i realise now are completely politically incorrect but believe me, it was wonderful.) Anyways, i was a student of the TV. I knew the TV Guide off by heart. Someone wanted to know what was coming up on one of our two channels, i could tell them. Any time slot, any day of the week i was the guy, a television prodigy. Now about this time, in one of my babysitting homes (yes, people trusted me with their kids.) i discovered remote control telivision.(this is my meager attempt at forshadowing) Up until then, people had children for the sole purpose of having them to get up and change the channel or adjust the volume. That was a game changer. Ok, back to Christmas. Every year, one time only, you could watch either one of the two major holiday masterpieces. How the Grinch Stole Christmas, or The Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Those were the go to Christmas programs if you were a kid.You prayed that nothing was going on on those evenings. You had one shot, one time only, one time a year to jumpstart the spirt of Christmas. If you saw those shows, Christmas would indeed be magicial. And so it went, it became a routine, it was the way it was supposed to be. But things always change.We got our own remote control TV, which my dad wielded like some sort of.....well, remote control wielding ninja and we never saw a complete show again. (i think i may have inhereted that) By then we had not two but three channels to choose from, plus a few more specials popped up every year but it was still all good. Then came the VCR (if i had a soundtrack, here's were it would go .....DUN DUN DUN!) Now VCR was in fact a wonderful invention. I didn't have to be home to catch a show, just record it, right? I could watch one thing, while i recorded something else. I was in my glory, i took to it like a fish to water. It might be possible ours was the only house this side town that didn't have a VCR that flashed 12:00 over and over. I knew what i was doing , i was the man....well, the kid and that was my undoing. The one thing i regret doing until this day (i'm pretty sure there was something else too, but i can't remember what it was?) anyways, the thing i never should have done was record How The Grinch Stole Christmas. It destroyed the magic. The minute i was able to watch that show any time i wanted, it was just a show. Not something to be waited on for endless days, planning your evenings around, being excited for. I think my kids never got to experience that. There's still magic in Christmas, i believe that. I just think that the things that made it magicial for me when i was a kid aren't there any more and that makes me a little sad.


........oh, just a small public service message here. If your fake crab smells bad, yet tastes ok, you should probably just throw it out and not put it on your salad because all the other flavors will make it ok. I'm never doing that again!

#2. or, Excuse me but my ineptitude is showing

  I am a farmer. I can strip down and rebuild a diesel engine. I run a GPS system on my equipment, plot an A-B line for "to the inch" precision farming. I can mark a point on that same GPS system to return later to the exact position to pick up a rock from that field. I have cameras mounted on my air drill to minimize driver error and maximize profit margins. I have grain bins with a data cable running in them to keep me informed of what temperature the contents are staying at.......
  Ok, this is the point where you imagine me standing on a grassy hilltop, arms akimbo, cape blowing.....well, um, no cape. maybe Carharts and work boots, sweaty muscled arms.
    In reality, i can't get that "about me" box thingy to work on my blog page. Luckily, i had the forsight to bookmark my new blog page or i doubt i would have ever found it again. If i ever am able to post a photo to my page, i am sure that it will be completely by accident.....
  Ok, this is the point where you imagine me, black shorts, brown shoes, yellow shirt with a zigzag black trim around the bottom, and a bald head.
  What i'm saying is this is going to be a bit of a learning curve for me. I am confident it will all come in time. I just ask you bare with me while i figure it out. You are invited to come along for the journey, ride shotgun, so to speak.......but you can't play with the radio.

#1

 OK, so...my first blog. I'm a noob. Or that might be nube? Either way, i'm new to this. I've got some stuff in my head, that needs to get out so here i am. Firstly, i don't spell all that well. I'm rather phonetic, which has a certain charm i think? Especially if you don't spell well. Otherwise, maybe it just makes you look inept. I'm going with charming. Secondly, i like comas, i think maybe they make me look smarter than i am? If they don't, don't tell me, this is going to go a whole lot smoother if i think i know what i'm doing. Third, i tend to ramble, which is why i suck at twitter and am better at facebook. Fourthly, i often refer to myself as i...lower case, (once again, i'm going with charming.) Maybe someday, i'll be important and become "I". Until then. "i".
  So, with that out of the way, why am i here? Mostly from the urging from some of my friends and family. Alot because when i post on facebook, it ends up being this long winded rant, that usually ends up being the thing most people skip over on facebook. I'm going to give this a go and see what happens. Also, i have this blogger friend, who is sort of giving me inspiration. Thanks J.
 well, thats #1. I hope there is actually enough in my head to keep this going. Guess well find out......together.