Working and Sick

I haven’t been around much on WordPress over the last week and a half.

All of it is due to the combination of working and working plus being sick. I started to feel sick last Friday afternoon and it simply kept getting worse over the weekend honestly, I’m still feeling under the weather. I do feel better, but nowhere near 100 percent.

It’s been a dose of sore throat, fever, and stuffy sinuses.

But, not working today so a chance to rest and bit and also to get a few things done around the house, like cutting the grass.

Here’s to feeling better – I hope.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

Work and Work

Well, not so much work as one might think or wish for. But, nevertheless, I’m working today and getting ready to head out the door in about 45 to 50 minutes from now.

So, any meaningful(a broad assumption that my posts have much or any meaning) may be limited to non-existent at best.

All of which may be a good thing. A day away from the “old blogging world” is often a good and necessary thing. A chance to breathe a bit and recharge the “old writing and composing brain cells.”

So, perhaps with any amount of luck, I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Cheers.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

The Greatest Event I’ve Ever Witnessed

I’m not sure of the worldwide coverage for Monday’s(yesterday) solar eclipse, but here in eastern Canada and central Canada as well, it is been a BIG DEAL…….A REALLY BIG DEAL.

The path of the eclipse through eastern Canada had it at one hundred percent coverage over a large portion of New Brunswick. In our area of Nova Scotia, it was projected to be about 95 percent.

So, with 100 percent coverage along with blue skies and no clouds anticipated, we headed 3 hours north-west to Fredericton, New Brunswick to experience the eclipse.

With Fredericton smack in the middle of perfect coverage, they had a three-day “EclipseFest” festival in the downtown “Garrison District” with a variety of things happening and culminating with the eclipse on Monday.

A large area of the Garrison was blocked off. There was music, food vendors, merchandise to buy, and science things to try out. And there were 1000s of people present.

I happened to read a few days before, where someone suggested not spending the “eclipse” with your face buried in your phone taking pictures. This is/was “a once in our lifetime” event. Simply be there and enjoy it.

Along with the music(he was exceptionally good), there was someone who I assume was from “Science East” a science centre/attraction for eastern Canada, who provided info along the way and guided folks through the process.

Without going into a ton of detail, people cheered and clapped at “first contact.” Cheered and clapped as the moon crept closer to “full totality or second contact.” And everyone went nuts when “full totality” occurred at 4:33pm.

And then darkness descended and it went eerily quiet. The streetlights came on; you could see stars and Venus(the only planet I could see) without using the protective glasses ….you could look at the total eclipse with your naked eyes. Breathtaking.

And at 4:36pm when the first blast of the sun peaked from behind the moon – the crowd erupted into cheering and screaming like I’d never heard. And then it was daytime again…..although a weird shade of light.

It was the greatest event I’ve ever witnessed in my life. I can say that without a doubt.

I said to Lynn on the way back to our car. That was an exceedingly spiritual event. It was for me.

This is the one and only pic I took. At maximum coverage 4:34pm.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

World’s Easiest And Best Chicken Wings

One of the many things I’ve discovered over my far too many decades rooming across this little blue planet is that there have been many events or situations that draw people together for a common cause. For example, many will remember the Live Aid concert back in the summer of 1985. There have been others as well, but that’s the only one that pops to mind, early on a dull Saturday morning.

Often these worldwide events, national situations or even things in our local neighbourhood draw folks together for a common cause or a common good. All of which is …….well……. a good thing.

So, what about – chicken wings. They’re guaranteed to draw and get folks together no matter what. Whether it’s Chicken Wing Nite at a neighbourhood pub or a Chicken Wing Nite at the local Legion for a fund-raiser.

On the other hand, you may simply like wings and often order them when heading out for dinner – maybe as an appetizer.

Chicken wings are one of those “foods” that folks can get really “fickle” about. Baked versus deep fried; Naked versus sauce coated; breaded versus not breaded. And let’s not even get started on the thousand-and-one sauces to either dip the “naked ones in” or to have served coated.

But, this recipe in my opinion does rival wings you may get in a restaurant. And the bonus is – it is as simple as fu@k. And healthier than deep-fried wings.

Crispy Baked Chicken Wings

You’ll need a flat pan/baking tray lined with parchment paper

Ingredients

• chicken wings(wingtips discarded and split at the joint to get separate “drums” and flats”)
• a bit of olive oil or whatever oil you may use
• baking powder(the secret ingredient)
• salt(less than a teaspoon if you use salt at all)…we don’t use salt… but you can
• garlic powder
• seasoning salt/powder or a favourite BBQ seasoning
• BBQ sauce(whatever flavour you prefer) or some other “wing sauce” to coat them after they’re cooked.

Instructions 

Adjust your oven rack to the upper-middle position. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. 

• Line your baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Use paper towels to pat the wings dry and place them in a large bowl. Drying them off a bit, is one of the keys to getting the wings crispy.
• Add a tiny bit of the olive oil(maybe a tablespoon) to the wings and give the whole mess a stir to get a bit of the oil over each wing
• Cover the wings with baking powder. How much? Enough powder to coat the wings. It might be a couple of tablespoons. It will depend on how many wings you’re cooking up. Just make sure the wings are coated with baking powder. The baking powder is the secret ingredient(see below).
• Sprinkle some garlic powder, salt(if you’re using it)and whatever seasoning salt or BBQ seasoning, like a dry spice rub for example over the wings and give it a good toss in the bowl. This “dry rub” part here is based on your own preference and taste.
• Arrange wings, skin side up, in a single layer on your parchment-lined baking tray/pan.

One would think given how little meat is on a chicken wing that they would cook quickly ….WRONG. This will take upwards of 30 to 40 minutes here. Maybe more.

Put the tray in the oven on the upper middle oven rack, and turn after about 15 to 20 minutes. When the timer goes off, turn the wings over. Set the timer for say another 15 minutes. Check your wings are they crispy? If not, cook after 5 minutes. If they are done great. The cooking time is dependent on the size of the wings.

Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes or so. Get the wings into a bowl and toss them up with your favourite BBQ or wing sauce.

Finally ……enjoy.

Why baking powder?

A little bit of research yielded this reason.

“Baking powder is alkaline, so it raises the pH level of chicken skin, breaking down the peptide bonds and jumpstarting the browning process, meaning the wings get browner and crispier faster than they would on their own.”

Go figure – right?

This has become a bit of a go-to dinner on a Saturday night. So easy to do and the results have always been near or better than restaurant-quality wings.

Perhaps give it a try sometime.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

Family

Family in many ways is an exceedingly nebulous term. In other words, “what defines a family?” Could it be what many consider a traditional definition of husband; wife; and some number of children? Does it include parents and grandparents? Might it be simply a group of folks who care; love and look out for one another? Is there any room to include pets as part of a family unit?

Well, in our case ……… yes.

Our daughter and her dog(a Siberian Husky) met us at a town generally located about an hour from her home in Halifax and about the same time distance for us – an hour.

Lynn and our daughter for the most part don’t get a chance to spend much if any time together when we do meet up. So yesterday, when we did connect, they went off for lunch and some quality time and I had to privilege(?) of taking the husky for the afternoon.

Where we met, the town has a massively large and wooded urban park(3000 acres) that is crisscrossed with walking and hiking paths and numerous waterfalls.

Now, Siberian Huskies like to do two things. Run and pull. They really like to run and pull stuff at the same time. Think dog sled and the wintertime. Our daughter’s dog isn’t a sled dog. Nevertheless, that doesn’t negate the doggy’s natural instinct to want to run and pull.

When they just got her

All of this to say, I spent the best part of two and a half hours and five kilometres walking our “four-legged grandchild” up hills; down hills; along paths; and up and down and variety of stairs.

Five kilometres spent walking and hiking on pretty decent terrain isn’t that challenging. Five kilometres walking and hiking on decent terrain while you have a husky attached to your arm…… is a bit of a different take altogether.

Nevertheless, a good day was had by all.

According to our daughter, once the dog was in the car, she instantly fell asleep for the hour car ride back to Halifax.

My job as a grandfather was executed perfectly.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

Yellow Door Art – Missing In Action(sort of but not really)

The title pretty much sums up the situation. So, on that note…have a great day!!

Not really.

We’re all still here. However, it seems that life is getting in the way and tripping up many of the creative thoughts and processes at the moment.

Between medical appointments; trips to Dartmouth and Halifax; work(or lack thereof); and having no fridge at the moment seems to have put a sizeable dent in “Yellow Door Art.”

All of this is no excuse, but it’s the best that I can come up with early on the Saturday of the Easter long weekend.

And putting all this extraneous stuff off to the side, the creative or creativity part does “feel like” it has had a bit of a derailment. I use the phrase “feels like” here and not something akin to a distinctive creativity failure – which would not be good.

As I’ve posted several times in the past, our own inner critic both as artists or not, often really throws a wrench into our lives. You get started on a new piece and that “devilish inner critic” pipes up with wild exclamations of it’s just not good enough; the flowers are wrong, or the scene doesn’t look right or something along those lines that immediately deflates your soul, leaving you to slowly put the brushes and paint away.

The problem is these are just “feelings” and as we all know, “feelings” at times can be a fickle lover. Now, feelings are a good thing, but often feelings are not necessarily rooted in reality.

Looking at a sports analogy. often when a player is struggling(it doesn’t matter the sport), coaches will get the player to go “back to the basics” and simplify their game. Struggling athletes often find that the struggle is due to “doing too much” or “getting outside of where they excel.” Getting back to basics and practising within the boundaries of what they’re magical at, does many things. but one of the most important things is it brings back or helps to restore confidence.

Art is no different. Often you simply need a “win” – a painting that looks like and yes – feels like a win. Perhaps, getting back to something basic and not hurdling outside of my own abilities may be the best approach.

Getting back to basics in art, sports or life is never a bad thing.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

The Fickleness of Feelings

Feelings can be a bit of a “fickle mistress.” They can also be at times our own worst enemy.

Feelings tend to get categorized as either good or bad, which can be slightly misguided, given specific situations.

How many of us label feelings such as fear, anger and sadness as bad or negative ones, while labelling others, like joy and excitement as good or positive. But for example, isn’t a feeling of fear that tells us to “get the hell out of there” a good thing in that case? We’ve labelled or categorized the feeling of fear as bad when it was actually a good thing.

You see, feelings can be that weird “fickle mistress.”

The reality is that feelings are neither good nor bad; feelings just are.

Emotions are part of your life and to deny them is to deny a part of ourselves.

Let’s continue.

This would be just about the last place to find an abandoned fishing skiff stuffed with buoys.

Now, not having extensive experience in abandoned boat finding, I would assume old boats would be more than likely found around a fishing harbour, a marina, some local boat works place, or out in the back forty of a favourite Uncle’s farm. You know, behind the utility shed where Auntie Mae isn’t likely to look.

This little darling, however, was found in a laneway just off Highway 311 in Prince Edward Island. Several years ago(2017 to be specific), we were on our way to hike Boughton Island; got lost(not lost in as much as misdirected by technology) and needed to turn around… and there it was.

Lynn felt that this little abandoned beauty needed to be included as part of our trip back then, so she jumped out of the car and snapped a couple of quick pictures. And that was it.

Abandoned, but now preserved on film. Well, at least digitally.

Nevertheless, what is the story or history this little fishing boat could tell if it could talk? What adventures did it have over its lifetime plying the waters surrounding Prince Edward Island? Was it handed down from grandfather to father and finally to son? How many rough days on the ocean did it have, trusting it would deliver the day’s catch and its owners back to the harbour and their families safely?

Who knows?

Much like this tiny fishing skiff, there are those days we may feel abandoned, discarded and worn out from life. And for sure, life can wear you out – if you let it.

I’m beginning to wonder if the problem here is feeling abandoned.

Feelings can be a fickle part of living. I wrote recently that sometimes feelings can take us to places that aren’t at times rooted in a strong sense of reality. Feelings are wonderful things, whether they be good or bad and are part of what makes us who we are.

But sometimes they are just that – feelings.

So, maybe we’re not really abandoned, but we feel that way for some reason.

I am and perhaps many of you are as well, our own worst enemy at times.

We feel sorry for ourselves when there is no need to. We work harder than ever expending buckets of energy to have the world revolve around us, forgetting that it also revolves around others as well. We start comparing our accomplishments to those of others with some arbitrary measuring stick, feeling that we’re not good enough and the list goes on and on.

Then there is that day or those days when we wake up feeling like the world has abandoned us. Just like our little fishing boat, abandoned at the end of a laneway in rural Prince Edward Island. The problem is, though the world is still doing what it does – perhaps on those mornings, the real problem is us. We just wake up feeling that way.

And do you know what the funny thing is? How do we really know that little boat has been abandoned? We feel it’s been abandoned by the story the picture provides. I only said it was on a laneway that we drove into to get turned around. This could have been a long driveway to a very expensive home with manicured lawns and gardens. Perhaps our little fishing boat is a piece of very expensive art commissioned as an entry piece to the property.

Maybe it isn’t or has never been abandoned by anyone.

Perhaps it only feels abandoned(assuming fishing boats have feelings). Maybe it’s been comparing itself to those big fishing trawlers and lobster boats when in reality our little fishing boat was the one thing that gave a father the means to provide for his family. Maybe over its career, our little boat helped that family send a child off to college or university. Perhaps our little boat is the only bit of history that remains that ties a family together.

Feelings are part of what makes us who we are. But, they can be just that – a feeling that may not be rooted in reality and that can take us somewhere we don’t want or need to be.

How we feel and why we feel in a particular way, especially when the feeling is negative can be difficult to get a handle on. Feelings are woven into and a complex part of the tight weave of living and life that we are at any particular point in time.

But that feeling may just that a feeling and not representative of where we really are at. Even not giving it much of a try, we can find plenty of people to hold us down and keep us back from being all we were created to be. You and I don’t need to be one of them.

Given that, today might be the day to stop being our own worst enemy.

How do you deal with feelings that may take you to a place which is not the reality you’re in?

Something to think about!

–as always with love–

—  get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself  —

Don’t Worry……. Be Happy

This post languished in my drafts folder for quite a while. Not sure why that has been the case, but it did. Nevertheless, we’re bringing it to the light of day.

Back in the late 1980s (1988 to be exact), a song that came out by Bobby McFerrin called, “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”

Unfortunately, many of us(if we were around at that time and are old enough) remember the tune to some extent and perhaps might even be able to hum the melody if forced to. Although, I can’t believe It even won a Grammy for “Song of the Year.”

Luckily we’re not heading off down the trail to dissect the lyrics and meaning of Mr. McFeerin’s tune.

An old, yet relevant cliche that gets resurrected every once in a while is, “Don’t major in the minor” or in other words stop paying far too much attention to small and insignificant details.

And doesn’t that in a nutshell sum up our life from time to time. It certainly does mine.

And I suspect, many of us do get mired in the slop and muck of “majoring in the minor” when it comes to issues; concerns, or problems that creep into our lives.

The question to ask is “Why do we worry?”

An easy question to ask, but a difficult and challenging one to answer.

And to be honest, I don’t have a great answer to that question.

For yours truly, part of the answer is fear of the unknown. We don’t know the answer to something, so we worry about what the void of the “unknown is.” For the vast majority of cases, my worry tends to focus on stuff that is in the end, exceedingly insignificant.

In addition, I’m also the leader of the band when it comes to overthinking just about anything. In my case, overthinking leads to creating thoughts or images regarding something, that hold no spot in the reality of the particular situation at all.

Thus, I became “a master” in creating worry when there was no need for worry in the first place.

The graphic in many respects is pretty basic and likely a bit simplified. However, on the other hand, it may very well be the truest bit of artistic endeavour we’ll come across.

Will we continue to worry?

I suspect so…perhaps it’s all simply part of our DNA; of who we are as a people. Funny, if we can’t change the whole “worrying deal”, then why worry about it.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

Update To Yesterday’s Post

Yesterday morning, I posted “Anxiety Can Go Fu@k Itself.” It related to an uptick in general anxiety I was experiencing due to a two-element test I had to complete to renew specific license qualifications for the part-time casual work I’m doing with our Regional School Board.

I can triumphantly report that things went far better than anticipated. In hindsight, this was one of those “nothing to get your knickers in a twist over” situations. The problem is that anxiety doesn’t recognize or care to recognize the “this is a nothing issue” world. It has its very own specific agenda.

It pops up when it feels like it and so clouds the reality of the issue, that many things or situations end up being made out to be far worse than they actually are. All of this can be so very challenging and disappointing when one tries to explain it to someone who doesn’t have the “anxiety bag” hanging from their shoulder all the time.

My wife said this is a good result to remember for the next time. She is correct here, but unfortunately anxiety just doesn’t deal with such logic. As well, the next time this pops up may be a ways off – I’ll likely forget.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —

Anxiety Can Go Fu@k Itself

Today I have to complete a test to keep a certain license qualification for work at the Regional School Board.

Since Monday, the “old anxiety” meter regarding the test has been slowly climbing to not very healthy levels.

Makes me wonder if it is worth it to keep this part-time/casual work situation going?

Time will tell.

–as always with love–

— get outdoors; find inspiration; discover yourself —