How to Blog During a Pandemic

This blog post will provide some key tips to help you maintain your blog during the pandemic.

The key to doing this involves learning a very important skill; how to repeat posts on a daily basis so you don’t end up filling your draft folder with hundreds and hundreds of posts which you started but never completed.

Take this template, and add your twist to the end.

Blog post #…

Today, I woke up.

Today, I stayed home. Actually, we all stayed home. Today marked the _______ day, that we all stayed home.

Today, we (Insert an activity from the list below);

Browsed social media

Read

Got kids onto their zoom classes

Worked from home / my bed / my dining room table / my home office

Tried to work

Exercised / Tried to Exercise

Browsed Tik Tok (and learned…)

Ordered something online / a package came today which contained…

Optional: Left the house

Not optional: Wore a mask!

Went to sleep

The highlight of my day was…

The Sound That a Record Makes When the Needle is Dragged Across it…

If you are of a certain vintage, you know what a record is, and you have hopefully seen a record player and would then know that sound a record makes when the needle is dragged across the record.

Sccccrrreeeeccchhhhhhhh.

Then silence, as the needle is lifted off the record.

That’s the sound that the sporting world make late last night with the word that the National Basketball Association (NBA) has cancelled the rest of their season effective last night after a player from the Utah Jazz tested positive for COVID-19.

At the moment the news broke, I have to admit, I sat up and took notice. It made me realize that this Pandemic was real and that we, as global citizens, need to step up and take notice.

Shortly after that cancellation, the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Lacrosse League (NLL) both followed suit and cancelled their seasons, although postponed is more likely the intended outcome.

Major League Soccer (MLS) is putting off games for a month.

By mid-afternoon on March 12th, 2020, the Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that they were postponing the start of the 2020 baseball season for at least a couple of weeks.

I hope that in the upcoming weeks, we can get more details about the virus, keep local people safe and keep travelers from spreading the virus. I’d make a comment about the severity of the virus but if our Prime Minister might have it (sigh) it just goes to show you that you have to be smart with your health and be careful of travelers.

I understand the fear – sort of – especially to those who are vulnerable due to age, health or underlying issues, but I don’t understand the stocking up on toilet paper. Just this afternoon, for example, I went to our local Loblaws location only to find hundreds of people in line buying toilet paper, canned soup, soda pop, and food items which do not quickly spoil such as onion.

I struck up a conversation with a couple in the line-up who had purchased 150 rolls of toilet paper, plus paper towels, cases of canned soup and a case of anti-bacterial wipes, hand sanitizer, soaps, and other such medical items.

I found out that they anticipated being quarantined into their home for a few weeks and thus needed to stock up.

I asked about the case of wipes, and sanitizer – thinking that if you’re self-quarantining in your own home and not letting people come and go, what exactly are you sanitizing?!?

With that realization, they removed the case from their cart and within seconds, it was grabbed by another family who already had a cart full of long-term supplies.

I don’t know.

I’m all for keeping my distance from people and not shaking hands, and I hope that others do the same. No more repeats of the guy sitting in the corner of McDonald’s coughing up a storm while everyone looks at him half in terror and half in wonder why he would come to a public place while sick.

He wasn’t sick.

He was choking.

I can’t wait until we can look back at this and move on back to life as we used to know it.

Ever Wondered How Fast You Can Get Out Of Bed In the Middle Of the Night When Your House Alarm Goes Off?

In case you have ever wondered just how fast you can get out of bed in the middle of the night when you home alarm system starts wailing, I can tell you this… Seconds!

Last night, at about 1:50am, while Toronto was in the midst of a very windy weather “situation”, the home alarm that we have on to, you know, keep us safe, started to wail.

As I shot out of bed, I was met in the hallway by 2 of my 3 children, ready to defend our house from intruders.

The teenager… slept.

I slapped on the lights, ran to the front door… closed.  Surveyed the windows… Intact.  Raced to the back door… WIDE OPEN!

“Intruder alert!” I screamed.  Gather your weapons!

Then the phone rang… alarm company.  Wanted to know what’s up.

As my wife spoke to them, I walked to back door to see that there were no footprints in the snow, and no possible way that anyone could enter the house that way.

Did I mention it was REALLY windy?!?

I looked at the door, it was still locked.  The force from the wind pushed on the door so much that the bolt slide over allowing the door to fly open.

So we told that to the alarm company, bolted the door back in place and then secured the door was the top and bottom with the extra latches – likely meant for really windy days like last night.

The kids, clearly traumatized, could not go back to sleep.  In fact, they “had” to sleep with mummy…

I took them into their rooms while I grabbed a hockey stick and checked the rest of the house, just to be safe.

I came back to sleeping children except of the one child who may or may not get anxious every now and then, and I sat with him explaining what the sound was, why it occurred, showed him that I barricaded the back door so that we could go back to sleep and then sat with him while he quickly, but restlessly dozed off.

As I lay there, wide awake at 2:30am, I thought back to when we first moved into the house and started putting the alarm on at night… One morning I forgot to turn it off, and opened the door and the alarm screeched away.  This child must have been… 3 or 4-years-old, and from that day onward for a good year or 2, he would get up, race into our bedroom, see if the alarm was still red (armed) and he would point at it and yell, “red light, red light”, so that we would turn off the alarm in his presence.

He wanted to make sure that never happened again.

It was quite the responsibility for a little child to take on, but that was his thing.

Then again, this was the same child who – after a couple of days of very heavy rain – asked us if he should build an ark so that we could all escape safely…

So the answer to the above question is seconds, and the answer to the question: How fast can you get back to sleep.. That answer is not as quickly as I got out of bed and downstairs… Not even close.

What’s Better Than Coaching Hockey?

What’s better than coaching hockey?  Coaching AND being the convener!

Oh yes!

I’ve always loved coaching hockey.  I’ve never actually ever played a single game of ice hockey in my life, but I have coached ice hockey before.  This year represents my 7th year coaching hockey.  My previous 6-years were in my early 20’s when my sports rehab coach, Michael Grafstein (he was the BEST!), asked me to open and close the doors in the bench for him as he was the head coach of a team in North Toronto Hockey Association.

He failed to tell me that the games were at 6am.

So I asked a friend of mine to join me, and together we would go out Saturday nights, come home at 3am or 4am, then get up at 5am and head to the rink.  It was way more fun than it seemed.

After doing that for 3-years, my “Uncle” asked me to help coach his oldest son all the way up in Richmond Hill, Ontario, for the Richmond Hill Hockey Association, and again I would drive up there and open and close the doors for that team.  I went on the ice as little as possible, but I was there, and I learned.

I decided I wanted to be a real coach, so I started the process of getting certified by Hockey Canada, and I took courses towards my National Canadian Coaching Certification, but stopped when I had to pick a sport to specialize in.  I didn’t want to specialize in baseball, for example, only to find my future children would never play that sport.

All this time, I was playing and coaching my ball hockey team.  From the age of 19 up to 45-years-old, I played in a the North West Toronto Ball Hockey League and the York Central / North Central Ball Hockey League, until I tore my calf muscle in a game.

I was awarded the Coach / Manager of the year award 6 or 7 times, and we won the championships somewhere around 7-10 times, and it’s funny how many hockey players tried out ball hockey but couldn’t play because there is no coasting in ball hockey like you can do in ice hockey.

With all that being said, when asked if I wanted to coach my 11-year-old son this season in his house league in the Forest Hill Hockey Association, I jumped at the opportunity.  We had moved from that horrible experience last season back to the league where he played his first 2 seasons and in this league, when you make the select team, you have to play house league too.

With coaches in place, the league was then looking for a convener or two to run their division this season and I must not have said no quick enough because that’s now part of my role.  I’m actually really happy about it, and really excited to see how the season is going to play out.  The other convener that I’m working with is absolutely fantastic.  He’s been around the game much longer than I have and his personality and thoughts about how teams should run themselves are a perfect match with mine.

So this season, while my oldest continues to swim competitively, and my youngest dances and trains in synchronized swimming, I get to spend time with my middle son at his select hockey practices, and his house league hockey games, and taking him to basketball games because why play only one or 2 sports when you can play them all and make your parents drive you around every evening and weekend.

I wish I had these opportunities as a kid…

I’m happy to do this for the fitness component, and so that my kids have an opportunity to work in a team, to have responsibilities to their team and their coaches, and because it’s proven that exercise helps kids focus and sleep better.

It’s a win-win-win-win-win… Scenario.

I prefer being called “Coach”.  I’m not sure what people call conveners other than really nasty words.  lol.

Thank goodness I have a brand new Canada Goose jacket to keep me warm!

 

What Do You Mean The Tooth Fairy Does Not Exist???

Has this already happened in your family?

All hell broke loose at The Urban Daddy household, and it all had to do with the “Tooth Fairy”.

Turns out that the Tooth Fairy somehow managed to write a letter to one of our children from my wife’s laptop…

Unbelievable.

Taker of teeth!  Giver of money!  Hacker!

This fact was discovered by our oldest hacker, er, child, Linus, who managed to keep that quiet from his younger brother and sister for the better part of a year.

This piece of information came to light as Stewie lost a tooth, and with the boys engaged in a brotherly game of “I’m smarter than you”.

Thankfully, it came at the exact right time because Stewie was none too excited about the prospects of some flying, tooth stealing, letter-writing fairy coming into his room at night and grabbing things out from under his pillow.

He could do without the money, heck, he could just continue to grab those funds from his brother or father’s stash, as we believe he’s been doing for a while now – although he does deny it.

Besides, in his mind, if that damn fairy can get into the house, so could the dreaded raccoons which live on the roof of our neighbours, or a robber, dinosaur or anything else…

Males sense, right.

So armed with this new information, we armed the alarm at night and let the cat out of the bag.

The Tooth Fairy, Santa, Easter Bunny, and the like are real…  Real to those who want to believe they exist and it’s not our place to tell that to others.

We all need to believe in something, right?

I still believe the Toronto Maple Leafs will one day win the Stanley Cup (but I no longer believe that will be done in my lifetime as I did when I was 8-years-old).

Oh, and it took Stewie less than 1/2 hour to tip his sister off on the truth, which we had to correct in part due to the fact that we told them not to tell a soul!

His little sister, however, finally is being regularly visited by the Tooth Fairy.  Two teeth thus far, and he’s kept that secret, OR, he’s convinced her to not tell us that he’s already told her the truth.  I suspect the latter.

How did the Tooth Fairy story go in your family?