#272 - Car Accident and Weed Killer

We slept in today and I really needed it.

Robyn was out of bed first and head downstairs. I figured she might be doing some overtime hours for work, but then I started smelling the tantalizing aroma of fried bacon.

She came back upstairs with a tray of eggs, bacon and toast with a bonus cup of earl grey vanilla.

Who’s a lucky guy? Me, that’s who!

We watched Bill Maher while we ate and his opening guest was J.D. Vance and I was shocked he would go on the show. Can’t say I liked him anymore after the interview, but he does have a good sense of humour.

We put on an episode of The Agency after that and just enjoyed being a bit lazy. We managed to finish that and ge once more in. I went to look at the garden and inspect the flowers. I trimmed my roses and picked up some fallen branches and twigs from the grass.

Robyn left to take kiddo #2 to the Go Bus Station so he could meet a girl for a date in Hamilton. They had been talking online for a few weeks, and this was their first in-person meeting. Hopefully it all goes well for him.

I went back upstairs to watch some YouTube videos until Robyn returned home. She brought home some groceries, and I helped her unpack them.

She asked me if I wanted to go for a walk in the park and to be honest, I wasn’t keen on the idea but I eventually I agreed to go. The car kiddo#1 can drive was parked behind my car, so I asked Robyn to move her car into the street. My car had the park pass hanging from its rearview mirror.

As he reversed out into the street, she collided with one of the cars owned by a neighbour who lives down the street. Robyn was clearly shaken by the incident. We sat on the porch; the walk ruined and called our insurance agent. She helped us figure out what was required for us to do, and since we weren’t filing a claim to fix our vehicle, she suggested we leave a note on the car.

I had an idea of where the neighbour lived, so we walked over and knocked on the door of a basement apartment a neighbour rents out and got no answer. We went around to the front doo and tried the neighbour, and she confirmed the car belonged to her tenant.

We didn’t feel like leaving, in case the car owner came by to talk to us, so we weeded the garden and then I mowed the lawn. At least to house was looking it’s best.

I made up a solution made from four liters of vinegar, a cup of salt and a tablespoon of dish soap and poured it all into my pressure sprayer. I used it on all the pathways, driveway areas and the walkway stones in front of the house. In the back I spray all the weeds in the BBQ area and on the stones under the deck. It works by stripping the leave of their waxy coating and the salt and vinegar drying it out and prevent further growth. I’ve used it in previous years, and it works like a charm. Usually one batch lasts the summer, but I have been neglecting these areas for the last two months. I’ll need to make another batch in a week or two.

The only downsides are it smells like vinegar and you develop a hankering for fish and chips.

I found Robyn on the deck in the backyard reading. After the accident she wasn’t interested in much else. She wanted to rest up before her support worker job started.

Kiddo #2 came down to cook her healthy meal of chicken, rice and vegetables. I watched as she boiled the chicken first in water and spices. And then put it into the oven to finish cooking. I don’t thing I’ve ever seen some one par boil chicken before. I tried a piece after it came out of the oven and it was definitely tender.

Robyn left for her job, backing out of the driveway very carefully and I retired back upstairs to the world of YouTube. I always need my Saturdays to rest and recover from the week.

My desire to anything is very low on Saturdays.

When Robyn returned, she told me about how when she was dressing the giy she was helping, they had trouble getting his leg into his pants.

He quipped, “Kind of like driving isn’t it!”

The two of them burst into laughter.

Robyn made us some roasted vegetables, but there wasn’t any protein in the mix except for some mushrooms. I cracked open a can of sardines and added it to my plate along with a couple of dashes of Frank’s Red-Hot sauce.

I actually don’t mind sardines, and I think they are supposed to be good for you. It rounded out the meal for me anyway.

Kiddo #1 convinced Robyn to go on a walk with her, so I went back to watching YouTube after they left and went down all kinds of rabbit holes. One fellow I follow, takes himself and his Jack Russel terrier up mountains to their very peaks. The dog seems happy enough to be there. In today’s video, he climbedup two summits and skied most of the way down.

While skiing he places the dog in his jacket and it just sits there and enjoys the ride down.

The dog has literally climbed more mountains than most human beings!

This guy lives in a van, or at least he used to. More recently he purchases a Tiger, which is a truck body with a camper on top. A significant increase in living space compared to his old Econoline van.

I’m not sure if the dog, goes by the name Rocko, made me feel lazy, or if I just found a little bit of energy, but a some point I got off my arse and fired up the laptop to get some writing done.

I put on some videos that wouldn’t disturb my thoughts as background noise.

Jacob Collier videos started playing after a while and I got caught up in one of the videos where he constructs a song using an orchestra and eventually the audience. There is something uplifting about those videos and they make me smile inside and out.

One of Jacob’s videos was playing when Robyn returned from her walk. I let some more videos autoplay while I wrote and Robyn read her book. After a while passed, I turned the TV off and sat with my eyes closed and let my mind wander wherever it wanted.

I’m not sure how long I sat like that, but it felt extremely restorative.

Kiddo#2 returned from his date in Hamilton, and it must have gone well because he wasn’t in panic mode. Sounds like they went Mini putting and then went and sat near the beach and just chatted for a few hours.

His arrival into our room got me up and downstairs to make us some tea. Then it was back to the laptop to punch out some words on my keyboard.

In the news, it looks like the US and Iran are trading blows again after Iran launched strikes at Bahrain Kuwait in retaliation for the American bombing along their coast. Can’t imagine the stock market will like that news on Monday morning.

I saw a humours news article about Vanilla Ice’s Freedom 250 performance being cancelled an hour and a half before the event due to inclement weather.

Which seems to have confused the local DC weather men who were left scratching their heads and commenting that they weren’t expecting and severe weather, not even a thunderstorm. Turns out there wasn’t any rain that night or the next morning.

The inclement weather excuse seems legit.

Robyn is meeting the girls for breakfast tomorrow and then they are heading to the park for a hike through the wooded areas. My plan is to get up when she leaves and start the day off writing. I have the lofty goal of writing more than five thousand words of fiction and then another thousand or more as a blog post. This is all in an attempt to make my quota for the word challenge by the end of the month.

I’ve managed to put myself into a terrible position again at the end. As it stands now, the last three days of the challenge, I will need to write five thousand four hundred words per day to make it. I’ve been struggling recently to get anything over two thousand words per day.

So, the odds are against me this month.

But I am determined to cross the finish line.

I’d like to write a story, something brand new or work on the novel I started as part of my assignments. Maybe a mixture of both might be a good idea. Asimov used to do that, write a bit on one story and then grab the next one and write a bit on the next, and so on and so on.

It might be a good strategy for me to employ tomorrow.

The main thing will be the amount of time I spend in front of the keyboard. It’s the thing that really determines the number of words I can write in a day.

The worst part of that, is that I injured my back again today while doing some yard work. And sitting for long periods of time seems to make it worse. I am stiff and sore every time I get up. It takes a little bit for my muscles to adjust, and I walk like a senior citizen for a few steps.

The timing of that is not great.

I may have to use my standing desk on and off to offset the strain and extend my writing time.

It’s late. Just coming up on one forty five am.

I think I’ll end things here and get a good night’s sleep to aid me in my writing tomorrow.

Wish me luck.

Until tomorrow.