#276 - Canada Day and Bed Day

Happy Canada Day!

We slept in today. I was up until about four AM last night writing to get all my words in for the end of the month. So, I was rightful tired this morning and deserved to stay in bed for as long as I wanted to. And Robyn wasn’t making any protests either.

I went back to sleep for another hour before gong downstairs to make Robyn some breakfast. Her blood sugar was low and she needed some food. I made her toasted English muffins with peanut butter, a bowl of fruit and a banana served with a cup of tea.

For myself, I put four slices of toasted malt bread, two pickled eggs and some prunes topped off with a cup of tea.

I felt like watching the lastest episode of House of Dragons. I found it to be another excellent episode. It looks great and has interesting characters. After it was finished, I turned to Robyn and said, “Do you believe that was only the second episode?”

So much had happened in the first two episodes that it felt like we were halfway through the season already. But that’s what an epic fantasy should feel like.

We put on Murder Mindfully on Netflix and watched multiple episodes. I think after about two, I went downstairs to check on the raccoon situation. I determined that the babies were still in the same section I found them in last night. I was hoping they would find their way-out of the trap door and leave with Momma, but I think they can’t find the way out.

I grabbed ladder and opened up a segment of the soffit near to where I could hear them and left a ladder leaning up against the side of the house to make it easy for them to get down to ground level.

I had little hope that they would leave during the day or without Momma to guide them. But I repositioned my doorbell camera to be able to tell if anything went in or out of the opening.

Nothing activated the motion sensors on the doorbell cam all day and I even checked the feed a few times throughout the day.

It was so warm that I instantly broke out into a sweat as soon as I was outdoors. While opening a section of the soffit, all kinds of dirt and debris rained down on me and stuck to my sweaty skin. I was completely covered in grime by the time I got the job done.

It was definitely time to grab a shower after all that mess and effort.

We continued to watch more of the Murder Mindfully series, but after watching quite a lot of them we switched over to the fifth and final season of The Bear on Disney and FX.

Compared to all the other shows we were watching, The Bear episodes felt really short. And since they were only twenty-five minutes long on average it shouldn’t have been so surprising. It was an interesting season with all of the episodes, bar one, depicting one day at The Bear. The final episode of the series was one-hour long and takes place some time after all the other episodes.

Overall, it was a good season, and it made me want to cook some food. There was a Lamb Tonnato dish that piqued my interest. Tonnato sauce is a cold and creamy, briny tuna and caper sauce. So the effect on the lamb is similar to a surf and turf.

During the last episode there was a bit too much waffling with some of the dialogue, but they wrapped up the series well enough to satisfy me.

Inspired by the show about high end food, I left our room and fired up the stove. I buttered some bread and sliced some cheese. It wasn’t gourmet but it was comfort food. Some time a grilled cheese sandwich with a little bit of ketchup just hits the spot.

I was getting that sensation from my body that I needed vitamins and minerals, so made up a batch of AG1 to have with my grilled cheese.

I brought one for Robyn and one for me back upstairs while we watched the show.

On this season of The Bear, there is a heavy rainstorm that affects the restaurant and the whole of Chicago. At the same time, back here in the real world we were experiencing the same thing outside.

Often if a storm is approaching, Robyn will get headaches and sure enough, she woke up with a bad one.

Our original plan for the evening was to go to a friend’s house to hang out and have a few adult beverages, but it became clear early on that we wouldn’t be going with the way Robyn was feeling.

I think we both needed a day in bed resting to be honest. And when the rain hit, it was the nail of the coffin to our evening plans. So, Robyn messaged them with a rain check.

I received a message from m counterpart in Ottawa that parts of the studio had been flooded and anyone working from Ottawa needed to work from home tomorrow. Ottawa must have got a really good rainstorm to cause that much flooding.

Another co-worker from there said he saw cars almost fully submerged in some areas he was driving through. That gave the Ottawa studio a power outage on Monday, an internet outage on Tuesday and a flood on Wednesday.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

I decided to do my writing session on the front porch tonight so I could keep an eye out on the ladder. It’s only midnight right now, so I don’t expect any movement from them yet. They seem to favour the one AM to Five AM time periods. The mosquitoes are out though, and I ran to the back and brough my Thermacell mosquito repellant device out to the front.

 I hate being` bitten by those little buggers and they seem to love me. I am like wagyu beef to those little vampires.

There hasn’t been and sounds or movement overhead either since this afternoon, when I removed the soffit panel and spooked them. And considering how hot it was today, I doubt the youngsters were out and about, particularly without their Momma.

Today being our nation’s birthday, I was expecting a lot more fireworks this evening. I’ve heard a few going off, but nothing like it used to be in years past. I’m sure the increase in prices has something to do with that.

A new trend that is sweeping the country is a drone swarm display. Thousands of drones, equipped with lights, are controlled together to create pleasing light displays, geometric formations and complext flight patterns instead of explosives.

It would certainly explain why I didn’t hear to many booms and bangs today.

I’ve also heard a lot of dog owners don’t like fireworks because it upsets their canine children. And with the ever increasing tendency of people to treat their pets like human children its really no surprise there are less traditional firework displays.

Or maybe it was due to all the extreme heat and the thunderstorms that celevratins were minimal this year for the nation’s birthday.

I did see an image of our Prime Minister, Mark Carney doing an impressive pancake flip with a spatula.

When I was a child, the whole street came together and shared all their fireworks to put on one big show for everyone. Dads would light the fuses from their cigarettes, a cold beer in their hands. Those were fun memories for me.

In those days we used to have street parties and pool parties. Everyone stopped by and we all knew each other. That sort of thing really doesn’t happen anymore. Certainly not in my neighbourhood.

In recent years, I have had to make a conscious effort to learn my neighbour’s names. I’ve even employed memory trucks so I could recall them easily. These days I use my iPhone’s notes app to keep a list of them in one convenient place. That has seemed to work the best for me.

One of the things I commented on to Robyn about today, was that we barely saw the kiddos today. Seems like everyone in the family needed some space and time to relax. I think we are a family of introverts although some people have told us that we are outgoing.

That made me laugh out loud, because we are the farthest thing from being social. We can do it for a time, but it takes energy away from us when we do.

But it’s nice to know that we can fool people into believing that we are social beings.

Sitting outside, I can feel the temperature dropping. It’s been so hat at night the last few days I’ve already forgotten that it usually cools down at night. Although, according to the weather app, we are in for another roaster tomorrow, something just as hot as today.

Well, I am about out of gas and ready for a good night’s sleep.

I hope you all stayed safe and cool during this heat wave and had a chance to see friends and family over this week.

Until tomorrow.