#222 - Cottages and Possibilities

This time last week I was just about to start a marathon of writing. I was over six thousand words short of the monthly minimum for the month of April’s 2026 words-a-day challenge.

Not tonight!

Although, I’ll admit I am about a day and a half behind in May, but that’s nothing to be concerned about. For the most of this week I have hit or exceeded the 2026-word quota. It was the Saturday and Sunday following the end of the last months’ deadline where I found myself completed obliterated and needed a few days rest. I still wrote and made sure to complete a blog post every day, but I only wrote five or six hundred words on those two days. That’s all it takes to get a little behind on this challenge.

Sleeping in felt great today. I woke up and made a tea, ate a slice of left over pizza and proceeded to do some painting. I had a meeting at eleven to catch up with my supervisor and the other lead. After getting all our ducks in a row, it was time for lunch, so Robyn and I took a walk under the sunny skies.

Robyn heard from an old school mate that he was putting together a show and because he’d seen her recent painting a day on LinkedIn, he contacted her and asked if she would be interested. The deal sounded interesting to her, and she made plans to have a more detailed call with him later.

At the same time, she received some news from another job in the healthcare sector and might be able to get some shifts in the coming weeks. As her contract with the studio ends at the beginning of July, this was all good news.

We came back from lunch with little more spring in our steps.

I resumed painting, this time on another background and sort of enjoyed just doing the work. And I did that until the day ended around five PM.

While I was working, I had on some YouTube videos, one of which is the Norwegian guy who built his own solar powered boat. He is adding pontoon runners to each side to see if it will stabilize the boat to make it more comfortable. But man can this guy drag on a video. Granted it takes time to do the work all by himself, but he is constantly posting videos about things he already discusses, many, many times before.

I think that is how you ultimately end up losing subscribers. Better to have not posted at all. But here I am complaining about free content that no one is forcing me to watch.

It reminds me of Neal Gaiman discussing all the times he put a poem in one of his books and people would complain about them. And he was like, they were free and you could have just skipped them. And I liked writing them. I did them for me.

After work was done, I headed down to the kitchen to make some Chicken Ruby. I had the chicken all marinated and it needed to be cooked tonight. I debated whether I should make the makhani sauce or wait until tomorrow, but in the end, I decided to go for it and make a double portion. Half to eat this week and the other to put into the freezer to make an easy meal one night next week.

I took about two hours to get it all done, and near the end of making the sauce I worried that it wasn’t going to work out right. It seemed off to me, but I kept at it step by step. Eventually, the sauce came together, and I was happy with it.

During this time Robyn and the kiddo went out for a Mother’s Day dinner at El Inka Peruvian restaurant, one of our favorites. I wasn’t invited, likely because the kiddo had offered to pay and it’s not the cheapest place in town. I had my sauce cooking on the stove anyways and didn’t take it personally.

Anyway, when Robyn returned, she commented on how good it smelled in the house. I had gone nose blind, but that makhani sauce tastes even better than it smells.

Before they returned home, Robyn picked up some scrubs from Walmart to use at the new healthcare job. Better to be prepared for the eventual call.

And then we had some even more good news. My In-laws just bought a new cottage up near Peterborough, Ontario. They sent us a video of the listing and boy, its bigger and nicer than our own home. It seemed to have plenty of land and beach along a slow moving and wide river.

It had modern elements and touches of the old. All the finishes were new, and it looked like it could easily sleep twelve or more comfortably. I know they had wanted to get a cottage for a while now, but during covid the prices had sky rocketed. I think the realestate prices had dropped in the last few years and this might have been a good opportunity for them to buy.

Either way, it will be a great place for their young grandchildren to experience growing up. And if we are lucky enough, we may get an invite now and again as well.

Robyn and I really enjoy the cottage we rent for us and the kids every year. It’s a special time for us and one we look forward to all year long.

I spent an hour outside this evening planting some more begonias in the backyard. Just trying to fill in spots that looked a little bare. I haven’t got a plan for this year’s perennial purchases, but I do have these free begonia plugs to use up, and I hope to make the garden as full as possible this year.

While we were on our walk today, I remembered we still needed to buy our yearly parking pass to so we can take our walks in Bronte Provincial Park at lunch. The tree canopies offer all the sun protection you need and the deep valley down to the creek creates a constant cool breeze making it the perfect spot four our afternoon walks.

It really does improve the quality of the walking experience for us and the fee for the pass is worth it.

Tomorrow we are headed to Etobicoke to celebrated Robyn’s oldest friend, Alison’s birthday. It must be challenging to get people together on Mother’s Day weekend year after year. But since we have basically already done all the celebrating, we are free to go.

I also have my assignment due this weekend, meaning I will have to get up early and start on that before we go. It supposed to rain cats and dogs tomorrow, so I doubt we’ll be doing anything else throughout the day.

Sleeping in is something we still plan to do, but these days, anything after nine thirty is considered sleeping in.

My parents arrived in Malaga, Spain today and seem to be enjoying themselves even if they are tired from all the travelling. They will be spending about two weeks there before heading over the island of Tenerife for another two weeks. Tenerife is a place they enjoy immensely and return to year after year. This year my mom’s youngest sister is supposed to fly over from Scotland to join them, something my mother is very excited about.

The big excitement for us tonight was being able to sit and watch some TV together, secure in the knowledge that we could both sleep in tomorrow morning. But before that I did some writing and Robyn read her book. I am behind in my reading, and the reading streak is all but obliterated.

This I shall have to remedy.

But after reading and writing we watched the Daily Show to start our viewing off with a laugh. And then on to a more serious episode of “Your Friends and Neighbors,” that was all about a funeral. It dealt with all the things a family might encounter after the death of a loved one, and it seemed like a departure for how the show is normally shot.

Good thing we are making a comedy sandwich tonight.

We finished off with Seth Meyers. When it comes to the Daily Show and Seth we mostly just watch the opening monologues. The interviews are rarely interesting on the Daily Show. We are more likely to watch Seth interview someone because he is generally better at it.

One of Seth’s guests was Nicholas Braun; who’s father apparently designed the lips logo for the Stones. Braun played Cousin Greg on the series “Succession,” and I thought he was great in that role.

In his latest project, a feature film, he plays a police constable that is incompetent and the local sheep decide to investigate the death of their shepherd as a result. I’ve seen the trailer for it when I was at the movies last month, and to my surprise it actually looked really funny.

The movie is called, “Sheep Detectives,” and also stars Hugh Jackman.

I saw Robert Jordan’s book series “The Wheel of Time,” is still set to get an animated version by the people who made “Arcane.” So, it sounds like that is a project that still has some legs, which is great to hear. Getting any show greenlit these days is a bloody miracle.

We could use a few more bit of good news like this in the animation industry. Right now, with the way things are, the clients have all the power to use and abuse studios. They know they are the only game in town.

It’s much harder to negotiate when there is only one game in town.

In more uplifting new, archaeologists discovered papyrus fragments used in the process to mummify the deceased. On the papyrus sheet was a fragment of the Iliad and according to experts contains a list of Greek ships before the Trojan war and is considered the most important part of the book.

It always amazes me that we are still discovering things from so long ago, still intact and readable.

Last week I offered kiddo a thousand dollars if he opened a Wealth Simple TFSA trading account. He still hasn’t opened an account. When I asked why not, don’t you want free money, his reply was, “It’s not like I can spend it. It’s for the future, why would you ask an eighteen-year-old to worry about the future.

I worry about our youth sometimes.

Well, my back seems to have healed itself. I didn’t have any relapses this week and I was more careful about how I was sitting. Getting up out of my chair more often and stretching when I could remember to do it seemed to do the trick. I also made an effort when taking the train to choose seats that we not only better for writing, but that also weren’t going to bend my spine and put any awkward pressure on it.

Tomorrow is looking to be a busy day filled with assignments, errands and a party. I hope I can get in a walk if the weather holds, I certainly need the exercise after all the food I ate on Thursday and all those anniversary donuts our friend Laura dropped off on the fourth. I think there is still one left which is surprising, I expected them to be gone by now.

It’s been a bit of a week. Colleagues gone, one I never got to say goodbye to, because he never came in that week. Changes in the management of our studio and the shuffling and redundancies of key positions was balanced by the good news Robyn received from at least two different sources of future work. Work generated by her one a day paintings posted on a site, that people reacted positively to.

I hope all our work friends land on their feet and find their way to something even better.

I think I call it a night, get some well deserved shut eye.

To a hopeful tomorrow.