December 2016

Why? Why would I do it? How stupid am I to be standing on the ice in the middle of Wascana Lake? I do have to admit I've always been impressd with that guy who walked on water over in the middle east way back when, but , come on, in the middle of winter walking on water in Saskatchewan is no big deal. Although, when the ice broke, it would have big a big deal if I had stayed on the surface. Here I am, I've broken through and slipped under the ice to a point I've lost the entry. It's not as cold as I thought it would be, I mean, my face is really cold but my body, not so much. My guess is the water hasn't soaked through my clothes yet. I could just set my feet on the bottom and push back up through the ice, that is of course, had they not decided on the 'Big Dig' when they drained the lake and deepened it by 4 meters. However, I was floating easily, must be the Goose Down in my jacket, and, there's a small pocket of air between the water and ice so my breathing is simple. I do start to panic and my life is about to flash before my eyes, but you can only read a novel so many times and I'm tired of that one. My face is really becoming numb. Then...I wake up. "Hawlayyoula!" How did you expect it to sound, my lips are frozen. It turns out, Deanie opened the window last night to 'cool down'. It's just unfortunate that the window is on my side of the bed, late night snow flurries have deposited a bank of snow upon me. The little pocket of air that made it easy for me to breathe is my sleep apnea mask. Deanie is still comfortably counting zzzs on her side. My shivering is shaking the bed pretty good, it registers about a 4 point 2 before she mutters for me to stop moving around. Of course, the shivering is uncontrollable so when she turns to punch me she's surprised to find her little fist in a blanket of snow. She notices the snow drifting in from the window. "Oops" is all she says. At least now she can shovel me out. Not quite yet though. She has to find the camera and get a picture, Mia loves snowmen.

Have a great day

Loved

November 2016

I'm walking across town to the emergency room at the general hospital, when
this older fellow notices that I'm carrying a step ladder. He gets up off his porch
and hobbles to his front gate. I'm thinking, he's either put a nail through the ball
of his foot or he broke his ankle when he was young and it never healed
properly, I decide on the later. I know this guy.
Oh. Sorry, you're probably wondering why I'm on my way to the ER. I
unfortunately put a piece of metal through one of my fingers and was unable to
extract it on my own. I know, you're wondering why I need a step ladder there? I
don't, it's the piece of metal that pierced my finger. Why am I walking? That's
easy, I couldn't fit the step ladder into the car.
 Anyway, back to this old guy, like I said, I know him. Well, I don't know his
name but I know his type. He's one of those "tough as nails" guys, and I think
this one might even be the hammer that hits those nails. His skin is like rhino
hide, he'll see a doctor once in his lifetime, at his birth. There will be one to
pronounce him dead too, but, because he's dead, technically that's still only
once. I can see he's broken his nose a couple of times, because it goes both
ways. Probably stuck his head in a bucket of ice to keep the swelling down, his
nose is still pressed against his right cheek. He's got a number of scars on his
head. It looks like his left ear has been frozen at least once. I'm sure he's
outdone me on accidents. He pulls out a cigarette, sure, why not blacken the
lungs as well. When he opens his mouth I can see he's only got two teeth, no
dentists in his life, probably pulls his own teeth with a pair of fencing pliers.
Even though one of the teeth is in the top and the other in the bottom, they are
not strategically situated, he wrenches his lower jaw to the left so he can hold
the cigarette between the two teeth so his lips can move while he talks to me.
That explains the orange stain running up the left side of his face to a discolored
eyebrow. He mumbles to me that he can free my finger from the ladder. Of
course, his left hand is missing the pinkie, the ring finger has only one knuckle,
the middle finger stops at the second knuckle, the pointer is intact, sans
fingernail. The right hand is practically a mirror image of the left, except, he's
only got a nubbin for a thumb on the right. It doesn't take me long to deduce his
method of freeing my hand from the ladder. He probably has one of those tree
branch cutters in his shed. Oh, sure, no need to walk to the shed, he has a pair
in his back pocket. I tell him my pain threshold is not high enough but he says
whiskey will take care of that. Did you guess? Yes, he has a bottle in his other
back pocket. I still beg off and graciously thank him for the offer. When I turn to
continue my walk to the ER he calls out to me...

Have a great day

Loved

October 2016

I just wanted to fly a kite. It wasn't quite windy enough for an easy lift, I had to run hard trying to create enough wind to get it airborne. I was watching it bounce along the ground as I ran right off the edge of a cliff. Sometimes the prairie hides those features. So there I was suspended in the air like the coyote just before he disappears from the frame, leaving downward motion lines. Lucky for me it wasn't like the Grand Canyon cliffs he usually found, it was the pit for the garbage dump at the beach, which really softened my landing. I shouldn't have to tell you that beach garbage is worse than city garbage, you should know that. My only course of action was an immediate hike straight into the lake. I was lucky again that there was a young man cleaning up his boat house because my clothes weren't coming out of the lake with me, he was kind enough to give me a pair of skater boy shorts. "Clothes make the man", they say. Well, I was feeling pretty young and decided to get a skate board and give it a go, don't get ahead of me now. I was thinking about how accident prone I had gotten since turning 60 when I remembered a scaffold incident in 2003, I was only 52 then. It was a six story fall, I hit so many braces and planks on my way down I was going so slow when I rolled off the bottom plank I was able to land on my feet. The loading dock accident happened in my forties, the driver pulled away just as I was loading the last box of tile, they were foot by foot ceramics before they helped to break my fall and became mosaics. Memory has me in my early thirties when I became wedged beneath a boiler, I was stuck for so long they had to flood the floor to keep me hydrated, they fed me sandwiches on a hockey stick. It was the week of my 21st birthday when I got smashed in the forehead with a slab of granite, I was carrying a slab when it happened and I managed to keep my wits and finish carrying it down the hallway in the legislative building. A few ladies were swooning and a couple of others fainted at the sight of me, I knew I didn't have the looks or presence of a movie star but I also knew I wasn't hideous either, so I was confused until I wiped the sweat from my face and forehead and ended up with a mitt full of blood. Wow, did I really become accident prone at 21. Then I searched for my earliest memory. I was leaning against the south wall of Sacred Heart School when my nose suffered a blow from a home run ball. The sky turned black, well, actually, everything turned black. When the light returned there were a few dozen kids screaming at me and another half dozen crying. I look down and see somebody has painted my white t-shirt red, and some of the paint is dripping from my chin. Next thing I know, what I thought was an angel swooped me up in her arms, turned out it was only a nun. I was 7 at the time, my nose was broken, mom said my head looked like a bowling ball by the time Tony walked me home. I broke my nose two more times in the next six weeks, so I'm going with 7, that's when it all started. Unless of course there are hospital records that would prove otherwise. Anyways, I think I'll leave the skateboarding to the kids.

Have a great day

Loved

Sept 2016

Rome wasn't built in a day. That doesn't stop todays contractors from trying. Haste makes waste and often, accidents. I was preparing a subfloor for tile when it happened, I was using my favorite finishing trowel, one I can say I have troweled 10s of thousands of feet with. It has been worn and honed to a fine edge, an edge a Samurai would be honored to have on his sword. I had the overhead lights off and a flood shining across the floor, it helps to eliminate trowel marks. Some numpty kicked the cord, putting out the flood, causing me to lose my balance, just as I was swiping across the floor. I knew something odd had happened. When the overheads were turned on I saw some lumps on the floor. It took but a few seconds to realise they were my fingers. Shock, sometimes is a good thing, it protects you from panic, the first thing I thought was,"I'm pretty sure I'm going to need those". You have to understand, the cuts were precision, scalpel grade, a world class surgeon would be envious. Not only that, I had taken Betty Jo's advice and had bought myself some flesh colored duct tape, this surgery was going to be a breeze. I was fast too, within minutes they were in place, neatly cleaned and taped. You know those jig saw puzzles? The good ones, the pieces fit great, they're challenging, and every once in a while a piece will fit perfect and even looks like it's right but it actually isn't. Well, I taped my forefinger to my pinkie stub and my pinkie to my forefinger stub. Now listen, there were a lot of things I wanted to be when I was a little boy, the strongest man alive, the fastest man alive, the man with the nicest hair (ok, that dream died early) the greatest golfer, the best swimmer ( I might just be the best dog paddler), Roy Rogers, Davy Crockett, the fastest draw, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, dad. Never, in all my dreaming did I ever dream of being a circus freak. I had to change my fingers back. The resurgery went well and when the doctors examed it at the hospital they stated they couldn't have done better. They wanted to know where I learned the skill, "On the job". I said. "I've done dozens of successful surgeries". I didn't tell them they were all on me. I asked if I could play the guitar, they said "Sure". So I'm out shopping for a Stratocaster. I'm excited, I've never played a guitar.

Have a great day 

Loved

Some time in August

I know, I'm really late. That's what happens when your life passes before your eyes.
I like people, I just don't like them in large numbers. It happened the July 1st weekend, which was my first mistake, visiting Halifax on the July long. I was minding my own business, standing on the end of Purdy's wharf on the Halifax Harbour. I'm not saying I'm not a tourist, I'm jut not a good one. A hoard of them swarmed Purdy's in a mad rush to see all they could see in the shortest amount of time. In their rush they bumped me off the end of the wharf. YES! Into the North Atlantic. First thing I realized when I hit the water, after how cold it was...I lost my hat. When I fought my way back to the surface, it was floating a few meters away. Just then one of those life savers hit the water a few meters on the other side. Priorities. I didn't want my head to burn. By the time I dog paddled to my hat the life saver had drifted into the current and was heading east, the numpty who threw it to me forgot to tie off the other end so it's on it's way to Scotland. Lucy, if you find a lifesaver on the East Sands, it's mine. Now I've pretty much dog paddled my self to exhaustion, thus, my life passing before my eyes incident. You know, it's the usual, breaking my nose ( three times in six weeks in grade one), getting a fish hook in my leg and hoping my sister didn't notice, meeting Deanie, having kids and grandkids, you know, the whole nine yards. I'm just thinking about the next reunion I'll miss when I start to go under. Of course! The last thing I see is my pet peeve, probably bothers me more than the lint in the dryer bothered dad. People's litter floating on the water, damn humankind. Hey! There's a carton floating with a French fry in it, it has gravy and a cheese curd with it...Ha! Poutine, my last supper, just before I head under. I'm going to do it like in the movies, leave one hand up 'til the end. What's this? Just before it joins the rest of me it grabs another piece of litter...a plastic water bottle. Huh? I stop sinking, it's helping me float, I see another one, ha, ha, water wings. There's another and another, they're all over the place, I start slipping them under my shirt and up my pant legs, I'm so buoyant I look like the Michelin man, my clothes will be dry by the time I walk to shore. God bless humanity.

Have a great day

June 7 2016

I've been cleaning out my garage. My half ton was absolutely full of garbage, there wasn't room for anything else, it was time for a run to the dump. I decided I would pick up a slurpee on the way home, being eco-friendly I decided to take my own cup to refill, besides I save 75 cents if I take my own cup. I threw my cup into the cab, then I got the great idea of being even more eco-friendly by taking my own straw as well. How was I to know that when  they say, "The straw that broke to camels back", they are talking about a slurpee straw. I threw it into the cab and the moment it hit the seat the brakes on the truck gave way and it started rolling down the driveway. I grabbed the side mirror and dug my feet in, unfortunately they don't dig into concrete and I was just dragged along. I could do nothing, it gained speed out onto the street and headed for the parked car on the other side. It hit the car, which, happened to be a Saturn, you know, the ones with the springy doors. There was no damage but the spring propelled the truck back across the street and up the driveway again. Of course there was a sudden change in direction and now instead of skiing downhill along side the truck I was being dragged back up the drive way. I saw the snow shovel beside the drive so I figured I could dive for it and throw it under the wheel, I figured right, I threw the shovel under the wheel just as planned. It was like a locomotive running over a nickel on the track, I now had a snow scraper instead of a shovel, and, it didn't even slow the truck down, I could have sworn it picked up speed. Actually I think I did swear when it hit the garage door and shattered it into thousands of little pieces like the way a windshield shatters, which was really weird, because it was a steel door. Then to make things worse it ran into the back of our car and pushed it out through the front wall of the garage just like it was going through one of those rice paper walls you see in all the Kung-Fu movies. The car rolled out through Deanie`s flower garden and out onto the swimming pool, which luckily was frozen. Now I figured if I carefully walked out onto the ice I could drive it off before it broke through. I was a little nervous, I can`t swim that well, I tried taking lessons once but they ended with the instructor stating, ``Some bodies are more buoyant than others``. Now as soon as I stepped on the ice it broke and under I went with the car coming down on me, only one thing I could do...I woke up.

Have a great day
Loved

May 2016

 I woke up in the middle of the night, Deanie's hand was planted right in the middle of my face. I raised it gently and pushed it toward her, it came right back and smacked me on the face. That's ok, I'll just use a little more of a push. I got a little more of a smack in the face this time. HMMM! Quite a bit more force this time and again more force to my face. It takes quite a bit to get me to the point of anger but I'm reaching it. I will need to use Albert's theory to estimate the amount of energy I will need to move the mass on my face the correct distance without throwing my wife right out of bed. I try and fail, the hand is still on my nose. This is going to take some discussion, I turn to face Deanie. What the...she's not there. You see I found this great deal on a pair of pyjamas, a buck fifty at the dollar store. It turns out the left sleeve twisted itself around my shoulder and cut off the circulation to my arm, it's dead from the armpit down. Deanie must be in the little girls room, I'll use the one downstairs. We don't turn lights on so as to stay in that night brain stupor, it makes it easier to go back to sleep. I always stay downstairs after using the little boys room, the bed is quite comfortable. I stumble around in the darkness, the bad news is I stub my little toe, good news...I found the bed. I lay down and snuggle in. I'M LAYING BESIDE A CORPSE! The last time Deanie decided to sleep downstairs was NEVER. Scared the you know what out of me, I have to use the little boys room again.

Have a great day
Loved

April 1 Be careful out there

Stop me if I've told this one.
In new homes, the painters paint the doors before they are hung in place. Once they've painted them they stand them up in the center of a big room balanced against each other in a precarious manner. We have to move them of course, to do our floor. We had a young gung ho fellow helping us one day and he gung ho-ingly grabbed the wrong door first. They began to tumble. We try our best to keep from doing damage when we work, I caught the first door with my left forearm and it slid down to my wrist, taking some DNA with it. I was able to lift my right leg to catch the second with my knee, I reached up in time to catch the third with the palm of my right hand. I know...I looked like the karate kid in a crane stance. That's when the fourth caught my chin and I dropped it to my chest. The fifth was brutal, it landed on the bridge of my nose forcing my head down...more like a Shaolin monk in a praying mantis stance. I don't recall, but, I was told the sixth and seventh crashed together on the crown of my head. When I woke up I found myself strapped down with what seemed to be 2 or even 3 rolls of duct tape. Some might think,"That's a cruel thing to do to someone who has just been injured." It turns out, it was an act of kindness, it was to keep me from rolling around in the back of the pickup on the way to emergency. The doctor was eyeing me over as he finished the last stitches, I could tell he was wondering what the other guy looked like and was expecting the standard "I walked into a door" answer. He didn't expect "I walked into seven doors".

Have a great day

Loved

I stepped on the scale the other day and realised creeping obesity had been doing some sprints, I felt it necessary to go out for a brisk walk. I knew it was cold and I should have known better when I opened the front door and even the air itself rushed in to get warm. Hey, "it's a dry cold" and "you can dress for it". I put on long johns, a long sleeve t-shirt, a sweater, a bunny hug (hoody everywhere else in the world), a fleece, a windbreaker and my coat, I looked like a sumo wrestler. All bundled up I drove down to the park to walk the lake. My scarf was pulled up over my cheek bones and my toque was pulled down to my eyebrows, the viewing slot didn't afford me the vision to notice the trees were bent over backward from the wind, had I not started out with it at my back I may have cut my walk very short. When I reached the half way point and turned back the wind hit me hard, bashing at my face and body, the "wind chill" caused the temperature to drop about 30 degrees. My breath froze my scarf to my face, ice cubes formed in my nostrils cancelling any sense of smell, my breath now had to escape through the crevaces between my nose and cheeks creating a fog, further deminishing my vision. My fingers and toes soon became so numb I lost my sense of touch. My head was so bundled I had no hearing. It was like I was moving through the park in a sensory depravation tank. Then it happened. Even though my already impaired vision was further distorted by the icicles hanging from my eyebrows, I'm pretty sure those were my own boots I saw in front of my face. That was just before I hit the ground. Black ice! Hey, I still have one of my senses, I bit my tongue on impact and I could taste my own blood, yeah, I know, that's not a new experience for me, that's a given, but I still don't like the taste. Vampires are just weird. So I'm laying on my back like a lady bug, my extremities are moving furiously but I'm not going anywhere. My coat is like the cloth version of whatever it is they finish snowboards and skis with, there's no friction, I'm motionless. I'll have to wait until someone comes along to push me to bare ground. That's a problem, it seems I'm the only numpty (only Scottish word I know really fits here) in the park today. Survival mode! I thrust my toque up into the air like a wind sock and wham, the wind catches it, it billows out like the main sail on the Santa Maria. Ha! I'm Sailing! Sailing across the ice to bare ground. Just call me Popeye.

Have a great day.

Loved

Feb 1, 2016

In my defense, January is one of the long months so my chances of getting through accident free were greatly diminished. I was working on a three story walk out and we were cutting outside on the third story deck. Yeah I know, very dangerous, especially when, you guessed it, no railing. You're getting ahead of me again. You have to know my saw was not close to the edge. However, every once in a while, when cutting, you hit a hard piece of wood and the saw kicks it back, it drove me back and whoop, right off the deck. I've learned through experience and was prepared. Ha, ha. I had tied a rope around my waist. Next time I'll use a bungee cord, the rope brought me to an abrupt stop and flipped me upside down. Now I was hanging a few feet above the ground and I needed both hands to unfasten the rope, so I'm looking at landing on my head.  It's ok because the yard slopes down to the creek behind and if I get myself swinging I can land on my back and slide down to the snow fence. It works too, unfortunately I whip through the snow fence like a pet through one of those doggie doors. Now I'm sliding out onto the frozen creek. When I come to a stop I'm splayed out on the ice and I intend to stay that way. This is a real good reason not to bite your nails, it is impossible to drag yourself across the ice with stubby fingertips. I have a pencil in my back pocket, I could dig the lead into the ice and pull. That didn't work. I also have a utility knife in my pocket (to sharpen the pencil). Snap away blades. Snap, snap, snap, snap. There's no utility to a utility knife when the blade is gone. Now let me tell you about some of my tools, I spend a bunch on the ones I use most often. My tape measure is one of those, it's hooked on my belt. It will do...military grade aluminum body, inch and a quarter wide titanium blade will stay rigid for 18 feet, the end hook fastened at six points for extra strength. Winch grade retraction spring. I slide it out and the hook latches the snow fence and .... bonus...I can watch my progress inch by inch or centimeter by centimeter if you prefer.

Have a great day

Loved

Happy New Year

It's not always my fault. Well...ok, I guess it is, but there's always extenuating circumstances. This is about one of those circumstances. The majority of our work is done in new homes, there is no lighting and the only electricity is provided by two electrical outlets. No, I didn't get a shock. I don't blame you for suspecting though. We do have to provide our own lighting. I was working on a set of stairs. Now. Let me tell you about this set of stairs, 17, that's right, 17 from top to bottom. Who builds a house that needs 17 stairs to get from one floor to the next, COME ON PEOPLE, give your heads a shake. What are you thinking? Of course I was at the top when it happened. You know when you have a big idea and that light bulb glows brightly above the head in the cartoons. Yeah, well that's not what happened. I bent over to examine the fit of the nosing I had just cut when my forehead touched the light bulb I had attached to the railing. O!M!G! We're talking the type of heat that gives Hell, arguably, it's most undesirable characteristic. You guessed it, it was a Hellogen bulb, yeah I know, right now you're thinking "Ed, you spelled that wrong". That's only because you've never rested your forehead on one. Oh no, let me tell you, it's the clowns who invented these things who spelled it wrong. Instant blister, and, not just where my forehead touched it, my whole head. Now I'm looking like one of those big headed aliens...except I don't have those spindly arms and legs, so I'm looking like an obese big headed alien...oh yeah, and I don't have those big black bulging eyes either, so I'm looking like a visually impaired, obese, big headed alien. I'm feeling faint, my brain takes over. "Not again, 12 or 13 steps I can handle, 14 on a good day, maybe 15 at my best, 17, not a chance". I black out. I come to. What a brain, it thrust my hand into the quick grab adhesive I was using for the nosing and grabbed a railing spindle. Ha! I'm still at the top of the stairs. The glue holding my hand to the spindle has advanced from the adhesion stage to the adhered stage, so I'm stuck here. Not to worry, I have a pry bar and rubber hammer at hand. I can pry out a filet or two and pound out the spindle. I'm on my way to the hospital any way, maybe they can remove it surgically. Now, I don't know if any of you know this about me, I don't like drawing attention to myself. To avoid attention I once walked halfway to the cabin from the little beach in inconspicuous silence ( I would have made it all the way except my little sister let the entire population know I had a fish hook in my leg). When I get to the hospital I plan on pretending the spindle is a cane, the big head might draw a few stares though.

P.S. This happened in December so I'm still accident free for 2016

Have a great day

Loved