Lisa Stokes

Carabram Park Community Ice Rink – Continued

I opened the rink on January 16 from 4-8pm after four days of flooding. It wasn’t perfect but it was good enough. I was quite curious to see how it held up when I headed over to the park at 8pm for the evening maintenance. Newman and I were the only volunteers that night and the skaters had not brought shovels and therefore had not scraped the ice before they left. It is important that the ice is scraped, preferably with a heavy metal shovel, after skating and before resurfacing, otherwise a pebbly surface will result from the skate shavings floating on top of the water. It took Newman and me about 20 minutes to scrape the ice. Lara and Joe donated three 30 inch wide metal shovels for the rink. Last year we had two 18 inch wide ones. Even though the rink is about 60% bigger it takes about the same amount of time to scrape as last year with the bigger shovels.

As we scrape we fill in any holes in the ice with the shavings. Then we do a light spray over the whole surface to fill in small cracks and cuts and lock in the shavings filling the holes. We wait 10-30 minutes for that to freeze (depending on the temperature) and then spray again with more water. Early in the season we do many layers each time we do maintenance to continue building up the thickness. Here’s Newman doing the first pass.

Even though we spent two hours scraping, repairing and resurfacing we were quite pleased with how the rink held up. We finished up by putting up the rink closed sign and blocking the entrance.

The entire diamond is fenced other than one small opening into each dugout and a larger opening just big enough to allow a truck to enter. I asked the City to put lockable gates on the three openings, but was told that it is against policy as it creates a safety issue in that someone could become trapped within the area and also might encourage dog owners to use it as an off leash area. The second activity already happens and I don’t have much sympathy for someone climbing into a fenced off area and becoming trapped. Unfortunately, it’s not up to me. Last year we had a lot of problems with people going on the ice when it wasn’t stable. So far this year (four days) it hasn’t been a problem. I am hoping by connecting more with people through my Facebook page and group that I set up for the rink, and by speaking to people when I am at the rink, I can encourage better behavior this year.

No one had volunteered to come out Saturday morning so I enlisted the help of Trystan and Owen. We had to clear a light snowfall. Once that was done, I let them go home and then flooded a couple times before taking Trystan to a skating lesson at Jim Archdekin.

On our way back I stopped at the dollar store to get a whiteboard to use for notices for those that don’t use Facebook. By the time I put it out there was a lively game of hockey going on.

For several years now we have given Lara and Joe and my dad a night out of dinner and a stand-up comedy show. This year we met at the Pickle Barrel at Bramalea City Centre, and my dad brought his girlfriend Doreen, then we walked over to the Lester B. Pearson Theatre in the Civic Centre for Crack Me Up Comedy Festival. The show is very dependent on the comedians involved and some years are better than others. This year was pretty good.

The day before the show I got an email stating that the headliner was ill and “If you do not ask for a refund and hold on to your ticket you receive a free ticket to a future show with Mike MacDonald later this year. Two shows for the price of one. ” Since the evening had been planed for a month I figured we had nothing to lose and an extra show to gain.

The weather warmed up over the day on Saturday to three degrees above zero and stayed there overnight, with rain and warm temperatures forecast for Sunday, which meant we couldn’t do rink maintenance on Saturday night. I closed the rink once the temperature hit zero and announced that it would stay closed until Monday as it wasn’t thick enough yet to withstand skating on a warm day.

I was unable to put up the Rink Closed sign due to being at the theatre and no one was on the rink when we arrived home so I waited until Sunday morning to put up the sign and move the barrier. I was shocked at what I saw when I arrived at the rink.

Yes, that’s right. Someone had driven a motor vehicle into the park, down a pathway, not a road, more than 100 metres, and onto the ice leaving salt and grit marks all over the rink.

There was also litter all over the place from the rink users on Saturday even though there is a garbage can just steps from the dugout where people put on their skates. Most of the people in the community are very appreciative, and helpful, but there are always those that just don’t care about anyone but themselves. It’s so frustrating. The sand and salt are now a permanent part of the rink: due to the warm weather I couldn’t shovel or sweep it off. On sunny days it will attract the heat and cause more melting than would otherwise happen.

Overnight Sunday the temperature plummeted again and I was able to flood on Monday, which was a professional development day. I took Trystan and Owen, and my nephews Jason and Ryan, to a new indoor Trampoline park in Brampton called Aerosports. We had previously been to another indoor trampoline park in Mississauga called Skyzone which we enjoyed, but we all agreed that Aerosports, in addition to being closer to home, was a little better.

In the afternoon the five of us headed out for some shinny at the rink.

Carabram Park Community Ice Rink

I last wrote about my Community Ice Rink on December 11 when a group of us shovelled an area of 50×100 feet, during a snowstorm, to create banks in which to hold water when I flood. It took us 90 minutes, and it was too late, and I was too tired when we finished, to go to my spin class. This is what it looked like the next morning.

Unfortunately, we had warm temperatures for the next couple weeks causing the entire snowbank, which was about a metre tall in places, to melt away. The temperature each day from the December 12th to the 29th was at or above zero rising as high as 10 degrees Celsius on a couple days.

When the temperature finally dropped to ice making levels about January 5 we had no snow to use to build a border and none in the forecast. On Tuesday January 6, the diamond was frozen solid. It went down to about -17 degrees overnight so I decided to try to spray a thin layer of water to see if I could get it to stay and not all run off the the low end of the diamond. When I got out there the water would not turn on, despite the fact that it had been repaired on November 27 and I had tested it to make sure I could turn it on.

I asked the City of Brampton for help. They scheduled a plumber for Wednesday afternoon and agreed to deliver snow for the borders. Over the course of the afternoon they delivered about a dozen trucks of snow. They asked me to mark out where I wanted the borders to go.

Here are the first two trucks arriving.

Back in December the City delivered two barriers to block the opening to the diamond. When the weather was warm they sank into the gravel, then, with the sudden plunge to minus double digit cold, they froze solid. Here two City employees try to pry them out of the ground. In the end, because the metal was brittle due to the cold, the broke both of them.

The first load is dumped in the picture below. I asked if they could drive along as the snow tipped out creating a line, but it came out so fast that it created a large pile of icy boulders. There was no way I was going to be able to spread it with a shovel.

It is surprising how little snow fits in a truck compared to what falls out of the sky. Here it is on Thursday morning after about sixteen loads.

The Park Manager brought in a tractor to tidy up the edges, but it broke down after the long side on the left.

Due to the problems we keep having with the water I asked for the standpipe to be sheltered. This is what they initially did.

A day later I was sitting at home typing a note to my City contact about the rink when I saw a large hut go by on a flatbed truck.

I threw on my coat and boots and headed over to the rink. The hut has brackets on it to allow it to be lifted by a crane and put into place.

The hut was placed over the standpipe. There is a trapdoor in the bottom and a skylight in the roof. It’s quite nice.

Here it is in place. It was a very cold and windy day. You can see the wind whipping the snow around.

Earlier that day we spent some time clearing a small snowfall, tidying the banks and building a bank at the entrance where the trucks were driving in and out. Michael is on the left and Kamal is on the right.

Now all we needed was water. The banks were good and the weather was cold. Unfortunately, the plumber didn’t make it out before the weekend. On Sunday we spent a little more time moving the banks back.

Monday morning, January 12, the plumber arrived and used compressed air to blow out the self-draining valve buried six feet underground below the frost line and I was in business.

I started out Monday afternoon by wetting down about an inch of snow that had fallen. I let that freeze for a few hours. Last year, we discovered that one end of the rink is lower than the other, so this year I decided to start flooding the low end to build it up a bit before flooding the whole rink. I did that Monday night and Tuesday morning. We also found that thin layers of water work better than deep floods. When the banks are leaky and the water deep, the water will freeze on top and run out underneath creating air pockets that break when pressure is applied (shell ice). When it is -10 degrees or colder thin layers will freeze in 10 or 15 minutes.

I was also advised by the City last year to keep the hose inside my house which I did for most of the season. However, I kept it in the garage in March and didn’t have a problem with it freezing. So I decided to try leaving it in the garage on Monday night. It must have been much warmer in my garage last March than it was Monday night, as we ended up with a plug of ice in the end of the hose and nozzle which took a while to clear. We also had trouble turning off the water, but were able to do so after running it for a while.

On Tuesday I was out for six and a half hours and flooded twelve layers. On Wednesday, I flooded morning and evening. On Thursday, I flooded deeply in the morning as the rink was fairly level, but unfortunately this revealed a leaky bank at the low end and created a lot of shell ice. Most of the time I had someone helping: Newman, Kamal, Mohit, Bryan, Bobby, Michael or Prashant. Thanks guys.

IMG_0804 edit blog — The leaky bank at left

Thursday night we had more plumbing excitement. The water wouldn’t turn off. We called the City, who called the Region, who came out, but couldn’t find the emergency shut-off or turn the water off at the standpipe. We left it running all night at a low rate to keep it from freezing up. I expected the outfield to be full of water in the morning, but it wasn’t too bad.

In the morning I went out with hot water and melted the ice off the nozzle then flooded every half hour or so, since I had to keep the water running anyway, until the plumber came and got the water turned off. Apparently, we had turned it on too far.

Friday afternoon we opened after just four days of work. Last year it took twelve days. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough and when I got there at 3:50pm to open up people were waiting to go on the ice. I had my first skate since breaking my wrist and managed to stay upright.

The first people on the ice.

The Year I Will Get Organized

I like to think of myself as an organized person, but getting organized and staying organized takes time and dedication and I don’t always spend enough time on it. I have set myself the goal of become more organized this year. When I come across something that takes extra time every time I do it because of lack of organization I am going to make the time to fix it. When sometime small irritates me every time I deal with it, I am going to try to address that. Here are some things I have done so far this year.

I love Lego. We must have about a hundred sets. Over the years we build the sets; they were played with; they fell apart; the pieces got mixed in with other sets; no one played with them anymore. Trystan, Owen and I have decided to take on what we estimate to be a year long project to sort the Lego into some semblance of order that will allow us to build things in a reasonable amount of time. We have four Ikea Gimse underbed storage boxes, which are 65x65x19 centimeters, and are full of Lego. We have decided to spend 30 minutes at a time several times a week to get it sorted. Once it is sorted, then we can build the sets. Then, hopefully, since the children are older, when we are done playing with the set, we can bag it up with all the pieces and instructions for future use, rather than it ending up in a giant unsorted box again.

When I took my Christmas tree down, I labelled boxes that were unlabelled, created some new divided storage (using the box from a 700 gram Toberone I ate over the holidays) and put in all in one place on shelves in the basement.

The kids never seem to put the phones back on the charging station. They leave them on the floor, under things, behind things, etc. I have even found one missing for months between the mattress and box spring in Megan’s room. I am forever pushing the locate button to find a phone. However, when I do that, all five phones alert, even the ones on their charging stations and I find it hard to tell where the missing ones are. It is possible to just have one phone alert, but I never know which phone is missing. So I downloaded the manual (64 pages long) to my iPad and figured out how to name the phones. Now when one is missing I can just make that one alert. A small irritation, but it’s still nice to know I won’t suffer from the irritation of hearing all five phones alert anymore. It will still irritate me that the kids don’t put the phone back, but that’s a harder issue to solve.

Two of my children pick their scabs and can keep them going for months on end. In order to get it under control I have to put bandages on all the scabs and keep them there until they heal. The bandages are constantly falling off, then the scab gets picked again. I spend a fortune on bandages. While the name brand ones are sometimes better than the generic, they fall off too. Especially, from the hands.

These Elastoplast bandages are a good size for small scabs, however, they often won’t stick even straight out of the box, let alone after hand washing or pulling on socks over them. On their own, they are a terrible product.

I decided to research what the stickiest bandages were and buy those, but in my research I came across Compound Tincture de Benzoin on a sailor’s blog. He wrote that he discovered that this substance would keep bandages on when he was sailing even when they got wet. I asked for it at the pharmacy. They didn’t have any, but could special order it for me. I order 50ml which cost me about $8, not much more than a box of bandages.

You apply it with a cotton swab where the adhesive part of the bandage will go, briefly let it dry and then apply the bandage. Here are three on Owen’s hand, one of which is in a very awkward spot on his finger.

It worked! They stayed on for a couple days. Now a couple weeks later his hands have finally almost healed after months of lack of progress. I wholeheartedly recommend this product if you have ever been frustrated with bandages falling off.

Another irritation addressed.

I hope to carry on through the year as I have started. Perhaps by the end of the year I will have addressed all those little daily irritations and will save enough time looking for things that aren’t where they should be to spend more time on the things that matter.

Sunday January 4 – Preparing Firewood

We’ve had a small amount of wood sitting in the garage for the years when the damper was broken and we weren’t using the fireplace, but it didn’t take long to burn through that with fires on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and with Alun finding his inner pyromaniac yesterday and today.

In order to provide Trystan and Owen with some fresh air and exercise this morning I had them bring all the wood that has been sitting under a tarp in the backyard for years into the garage to dry out.

There was the usual complaints and bickering, but we got the job done. It ought to take a few fires to get through this pile.

Once it dries I’ll provide Alun and Trystan the opportunity of fresh air and exercise by sending them out to chop it all up!

Thursday January 1 – New Year’s Day

We had lots of help cleaning up the party last night including help from 11 year old Ariel and 9 year old Olivia who were having so much fun being up late that they preferred to help clean rather than go to bed. The food was put away, the dishes cleared and washed and the floors vacuumed by 1:30 am. I went to bed, but left Michael, Megan, Kevin and Victoria in front of the TV where they watched a movie before sleeping.

I woke up at 6am with a headache even though I drank nothing last night. It’s not fair. I took some Tylenol with caffeine and slept until 9am. Thankfully the headache was gone when I re-awoke.

For years the Williams’ family has been staying with us when they come to the Toronto area and Michael usually cooks everyone a Big Breakfast. Shawna, who normally eats almost nothing, always asks for Big Breakfast when she comes. Since the other adults stayed up hours longer than I did I got up and cooked.

After that we had a relatively lazy day. The house is comfortably full when the Williams’ visit with the four adults and eight children aged from four to seventeen. My children usually help to look after the younger Williams’ children.

The guys hung out in the family room having a Star Wars movie marathon with some of the children and Victoria and I hung out in the kitchen playing Banagrams and Monopoly with the other children.

We ate leftover New Year’s Eve food all day long. It was a satisfying way to start 2015.

Wednesday December 31 – New Year’s Eve

Our overnight guests arrived last night and were very helpful in preparing for our annual New Year’s Eve party. They brought Trystan with them. He had been staying in St. Thomas with them since Boxing Day.

Here’s a picture of Trystan and me.

We have been having a New Year’s Eve party since 1999 when we moved into our current house. We decided to start it at 6pm way back then since we, and most of the guests, had small children. It was several years before the party lasted until midnight. In fact, one year I remember waking my sister, who was asleep on the couch at 10pm, and telling her to go home. That year Michael and I cleaned up and were in bed before 11pm.

This year the guests did not begin arriving until 7:30. The youngest child is four years old and was an overnight guest at our house so could go to bed when he got tired. Everyone stayed until after midnight. I think we will start the party at 8pm next year.

We had our first fire in years. The new damper worked perfectly.

It was great spending New Year’s Eve with friends and family. We’ve been doing it so many years that everyone is comfortable with each other. We had expected a neighbourhood couple, Carolyn and Doug, whom we had not invited in the past, but unfortunately they caught the cold that is going around and had to cancel. Patti and Ivan were also too ill to join us.

Newman, Mary and Jennifer, Marjam, Amir and Mona, our neighbours, were with us as usual. My sister and her family, my father and Kevin, Victoria and their children are also regulars. My father brought his girlfriend, Doreen, for the first time. Megan’s friend Jeremy joined us for the first time and Trystan’s friend Zack and his mother, Melony joined us for the second year. My friend Gail has been a regular attendee for several years now. It was a great start to the new year.

Monday December 29 – Room Three Completed

We had hoped to be done the three room renovations by Christmas but lost a few weeks when Michael had to travel to the UK unexpectedly. Trystan and Owen were able to move into Trystan’s new room on Christmas Eve. We took Christmas Day off and got right back at it on Boxing Day as we were hoping to host overnight guests in Owen’s completed room on December 30. Given how long the previous rooms took we weren’t sure that we could finish but figured it was worth trying. Here’s the room before we began.

Owen came down with quite a bad cold right after school ended on the Friday before Christmas. By Boxing Day he had passed it on to Michael and Megan. However, Michael worked on getting Owen’s room done anyway. That might be why when I asked if he had sanded the room he answered, “yes”.

We spend a lot of time preparing to paint. We remove all the face places, we fill holes and sand them. We give the whole surface a light sanding and then wipe it down with a damp cloth to remove the dust. With the walls prepared this way they usually take paint quite well. Here is what the room like just before we began putting on the primer which was necessary because we were painting yellow over a dark blue.

When I started to cut in I thought that the brush seemed to be slipping across the wall, however, I ignored the thought and carried on. After the first two walls were cut in I started rolling while Michael continued cutting in on the third. I rolled the first wall and half the second. It looked terrible. At that point I asked Michael again if he had sanded the walls. This time he answered, “No”. It transpires that he thought I was asking about sanding the patches the first time I asked and he had completely forgotten the step of sanding the walls. We decided to carry on, let it dry, sand and prime again later in the day.

As you can see the blue is still showing through quite a bit. Here it is after a second coat of primer. Much better.

The following day we put on a third coat of primer. It was quite easy doing this room. It is a lot smaller and less complicated than Trystan’s and each coat went on quite quickly. We also put on both coats of paint on Saturday. Here it is after the first coat of paint.

Here it is all finished with the tape, tools and drop cloths removed.

Sunday Morning I headed to IKEA to buy the bed while Michael painted the door trim and baseboards. By Sunday his cold was much worse. He was coughing and could not speak above a whisper. Consequently, the doors have yet to be painted as he didn’t feel well enough and we needed to move on.

My friend Gail who was on her way home from spending Christmas in Barrie was kind enough to meet me at IKEA to help load up the new bed. The frame came in three boxes which totaled 240 pounds in weight. The largest of the three must have been about 140 pounds. We got it on the cart with great difficulty and not before I dropped it on one of my fingers! The finger was bruised and swollen the next day. Once we loaded up the frame and mattresses I paid and we put them into the car. Then we went back in and shopped for the bedding. After a well deserved lunch at Panera Breads we parted and I head home.

I decided we would not be able to get the biggest box up the stairs so I carried the smallest one up by myself and enlisted Alun’s aid in carry the medium size box. It was very awkward and Alun is often deliberately difficult when asked to help, and did not deviate from that behavior in this instance, so it was quite a challenge getting it upstairs. We should have opened it in the van and carried it up piece by piece as we did for the largest of the three boxes.

We have quite a bit of IKEA furniture. Michael usually takes the lead building it with me as assistant, although I have built a few utility shelves by myself with the children’s help over the past couple of years.

I had read that it takes two people about four hours to build the Hemnes Daybed. Aside from at a few points where it is absolutely necessary to have two people, I built it by myself. All those years building Lego models with the children were good training. It was useful to have a completely empty room to build in.

It took me six hours to build it. I laid the mattresses out in Trystan’s room to expand. They are sold vacuum packed in a roll and take 72 hours to puff up.

Monday morning the old futon, which I have always detested and am so pleased to get rid of, sits on the curb.

When Owen woke on Monday we put the mattresses on the bed and made it up with the new sheets. He was thrilled to jump in and try it out.

He was able to sleep in it one night before moving back to Trystan’s room to accommodate our overnight guests for two nights.

After our guests left, we moved the rest of the furniture into the room. Owen wants to keep it as a king sized bed for now.

I will probably make a new curtain that blends in better, but we will be getting new windows this year, so I will wait until after that happens. It is very satisfying to be done and it only took a few days longer than planned. Perhaps we will do the upstairs bathrooms next.

A final note: the wall colour hasn’t photographed consistently in all the images, however, it looks most accurate in the final two images where the room is furnished.

Thursday December 25 – Christmas Day

Each year as the children age we start Christmas Day later. Compromises are still made – ten year old Owen would prefer 7am and seventeen year old Megan would prefer noon. This year we settled on 9am.

For the first time we didn’t leave out a snack for Santa. Here is the tree just before Michael and I went to bed.

We met in the family room where another first happened: there were no gifts from Santa. Owen tells me he knew there was no Santa last year, but didn’t want us to know he knew. I took the traditional pre-present-opening picture on the couch and then we began opening gifts. Stockings are opened concurrently by all. Gifts, we open one at a time, starting with the youngest opening one gift, then the next oldest person opening one gift until each person has opened one gift then back to the youngest for their second gift and so on until everything is open.

Megan and Alun would have preferred to still be in bed.

Then we tidy up and have breakfast – the more sensible among us eat breakfast foods, the others begin on the Christmas chocolate.

Michael enjoys spending the day cooking and has it down to an art. This year he began two days before Christmas by brining the turkey.

My sister and her family and my father and his girlfriend arrived about 1:30. We snacked and visited and then began round two of present opening. It doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to since Grandpa doesn’t like shopping and the children are happy to have money and to spend it themselves.

We served dinner only half an hour after the planned time of 4pm. It was probably the best we’ve had with turkey, bread stuffing, sausage stuffing, gravy, mashed and roast potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts and parsnips.

After cleaning up from dinner and giving our tummies a rest, we cut up fruit and melted chocolate for a fondue. Delicious.

Sunday December 21 – Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking

Yesterday morning Patti and I met for our usual run in the Etobicoke Creek valley followed by refreshments at Second Cup. We usually run for some number of minutes (up to ten), walk for a minute and then repeat until we have gone about 6.5 kilometres. One of us wears a watch and keeps track. I was wearing my watch yesterday. When it is cold and I am wearing long sleeves I wear the watch over the sleeve. In order to take off my jacket at Second Cup I take off the watch and put it in a pocket.

Today, between coats of paint in Trystan’s room, we went to Williams Coffee Pub for a cappuccino. Megan accompanied us, Michael drove. When we returned home I got out of the van on the driveway and Megan got out in the garage. She came into the house and handed me the pieces of my watch, which must have fallen out of my pocket yesterday as I got out of the car after returning home from running. Michael drove over it.

The casing is smashed, but it still works, and I have been carrying the working part in my hand when I go for a run since then because I haven’t got around to shopping for a new one yet.

Timex: it really does “take a licking and keep on ticking”.

Finished Room Two of Three

We have finished turning my old sewing room into Trystan’s room. Most of the furniture from Trystan’s and Owen’s old room has been moved to Trystan’s room. Only one dresser and night table will move back. When we have company Owen will temporarily move into Trystan’s room into the second bed and his room will be used as a guest room. They are currently sharing while we work on his room.

Here is a view of the room set up as my sewing room.

Here it is all done and ready for Trystan to move in:

Here is the same view now.

This is what it looked like in the other room.

Here are the other views in Trystan’s room:

Here’s Owen’s room ready for sanding, washing, priming and painting.

I spent a few hours cutting and sewing in my new sewing room today. My inaugural project was to make pillow covers out of two molas that my parents brought back from one of their cruises. Dad has been doing some renovating of his own and thought these molas would look good as pillows on his new couch. He probably won’t see the blog before I give them to him for Christmas tomorrow, but even if he does it won’t ruin a surprise. He knows he’s getting them.

Merry Christmas. Time to wrap presents and fill stockings.