BZZZZY, BZZZY, busy as a bee today!
It's my first Halloween.
Carman, here's that bee outfit that you gave us. Finally came in handy. By the way. He's just turned 6 months and this outfit was 3-6months. So the pants were a little short. At least he was able to breathe in it.
And no my nose didn't explode, I thought I'd bought some black makeup from the dollar store, it looked black and the store employee was the one that pointed it out to me and said "hey we have some black lipstick that you could use". When Tresa put some on her hand to try it out, it looked red. I said it can't be. I read the label on it, it said "mood magic". So I put it on. And it looked much darker originally. Pretty much like a dark purple. But then it got brighter.
But the day started out much different. It was the eve of Daylight Savings. And I did some errands before Tresa and Kieran returned from Oshawa.
This is Ola our neighbour, guess what her name is short for. And it's not Olga.
It's Olympia.
Believe me she could be in the olympics for wrestling, weightlifting or shot put, in the men's division. She strong, man.
This leaning white mast was our flagpole. We didn't pay extra for that thing, it came with the house.
Anyways it was a beautiful weekend. And there won't be too many like these left this year. So while Tresa put up the hallowe'en decorations, I puttered around the house - swept the front, tidied up the back yard, gathered up all the leaves and trimmed vines. I was pulling up some of the morning glory vines and accidentally grabbed a rose bush by accident. It hurt and I was bleeding. That rose bush is now living on borrowed time.
Instead of hacking the thing to pieces I worked on one of the long standing items on our TODO list.
Tresa couldn't stand this flagpole in our front yard from the day we first saw the house. We bought it with the intention of digging it out. The old owners even put a new flag on it for us. Which we left on until it was shredded and one of our neighbours said - "Ray, you should probably replace that flag." Isn't it illegal to have a shredded Canadian flag up?
Three years later, it was still an eyesore for her. But NO MORE. It was coming down.
Knowing that we're going to re-sod our front next spring. I thought. Might as well do it now. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to dig too deep. See that shovel. That's how deep I had to go. The daughter of the previous owner's of our house, said to us when we were buying the house - "Good luck in removing that flagpole, it's probably 10 ft deep."
Not quite.
It was either the flagpole or me.
I beat the flagpole.
Look to the light. The light is good. It's like a miracle, we got that thing out. I couldn't believe how friggin deep it was. They don't use that much cement for the light posts.
See the height of that shovel. That's basically how deep I had to dig.
That's 2 solid buckets of concrete. It weighed a ton. It took me Joe - from across the street, and Ola our polish neighbour and myself to pull this thing out. Ola may be a senior citizen, but she leveled a 40' tree by herself. She's like a bull.
So with the flagpole out and cut to pieces, basically half the work was done, but we had to head out to a part-tay. So the rest of the flag pole work had to wait til the next day.
This is Alli. We were heading to her and Jordan's place. Thank god she had food. I was starving. I had been going non-stop all day. I was so hungry I could eat my left hand.
Or fingers? lady fingers? Actually they were really yummy. I must have eaten at least a hand.
Elvis lives man. And he can run 10K.
This is Eric and Alicia. The friends we had a garage sale with.
That bee belongs to us.
More photos of Hallowe'en...
We got to their place around midnight, but Kieran was super tired. He was ready to sting someone if he wasn't in a nice warm bed.
Kieran was pooped. He was so tired. He had been dealing with a cold all week. So he was toughing it at the parties. And he was a good boy.
Lesson for today boys and girls: whatever you do,
never buy make up from a store that sells "Everything for a dollar". Remember my Rudolf red nose. Well the stuff wasn't coming off with regular soap.
I use this stuff to clean my hands when I'm working on the car. I think I got almost all of it off, but it was still slightly red. Not sure if it was because I the grit in this stuff took off 10 layers of skin, because it was stinging. I had to put super cold water on my face to soothe the burn.
Inspired by Jordan and Alli's place, in that some IKEA furniture can really work and look good! The next day, I managed to say good-bye to an old pain in my behind. Our old futon. We're expecting our new sofa to arrive this week so. We needed to make room. And I didn't want this thing in the basement, I figured we can find something from IKEA that'll work. So if you want to come All, call us and Tresa and Kieran and I can make an afternoon of it.
I put an ad in Craigslist that it was for free to whoever picked it up. Within minutes of putting up the ad, I got an email, then another and another. I couldn't believe it. Tresa said that I should've sold it for 25 bucks. But this thing was old, it was falling apart. It was missing nuts on bolts. And I didn't care. I just wanted it gone. Plus, because it's free, people are like vultures. Put a dollar figure beside it and people avoid you like you've got the Avian Flu.
There was one lady who was second in emailing me, who was begging me to save it for her. Then when the first guy said he couldn't stuff it into his honda civic, I emailed the lady back to say she could have it if she can pick it up today. She then asked if we had pets or smoked and it the futon was in good condition. I was about to reply. Then I thought. This thing is free. What the HECK? If she wanted something good. Buy something NEW. Damn CHEAP-O. Beggars can't be choosers man. So I called the next dude on the list and they picked it up at 10pm that night. I was hoping it'd be gone before night fall. I checked out Craigslist in SanFran and in the FREE section, someone was getting rid of a futon, old stereo and he just gave his address and said, it's on the curb. First come first served.
This was my costume that I was trying out for size. Doesn't it look like I'm right out of the Shawshank Redemption. Now all I need is the ball and chain.
So after about an hour of straight chiselling and my hand going numb and getting only 1/4 of it broken off. My neighbour Joe brought over that sledge hammer. He said it would go faster. So I laid into the base and started wailing away. Pieces of concrete were flying everywhere. But the going was slow, it wasn't much faster than the hammer and chisel. I thought I'd be doing this for at least the rest of the week. Then one lucky smack and the thing cracked right down the rest of the base. WOO HOO! Sayonara flagpole.
This was what was left of it. The sun was setting and I didn't want to be pounding in the middle of the dark.
In the end this was our flagpole. May it R.I.P.
I can't really take too much credit for this. I had expended so much energy beating the crap out of the concrete base of that flagpole that I was willing to take a short cut carving this pumpkin. It's really easy. You buy these carving kits from Shoppers Drug Mart or Loblaws. It comes with this little saw like cutter, pin and scraper tools and several cool stencils.
This our neighbour Joe. He's into Goth. He was playing this CD full of scary sounds trying to spook the kids. But in return he gives the kids lots of candy.
After a few houses of trick or treating, Kieran was tired. I walked him up and down the street so he could watch the other kids. And before you knew it. Lights out.
But after a little power nap, he was going after the leftovers.
Post a Comment