How do you manage screen time for yourself?
I know perfectly well how addicted I am to my social media, the internet of things, email, browsing VIDEO-ON-DEMAND-TELEVISION {{{YouTube Premium account… thank you for having the household pay for it, my love, TS}}}, photo-journalizing, imaging, electronic doodling, and yes, blogging on WordPress.
There’s a reason Steve Jobs (and possibly Bill Gates) forbid their young children having their own iPhones-MicroSoft-thingies. The dopamine rush of discoveringjustonemorevideoandletmeshareittotheworld is real. I also know very well the colour spectrum of my LCD terminals play havoc with my biological clock.
How bad are electronic device notifications? Look at this August 2025 article-link.
And here’s a somewhat controversial article from November 2022 where a boarding school enforced LIGHTS OUT with their teenager-cadets (read the article-link’s fine print… no video… but a-okay for audio).
Okay, so how do I manage my personal visual inputs? Here’s an unprioritized list:
- I use my iWatch’s timer feature. It then gives me a tactile, flashing, and audio alert when time’s up. I set it for 15 minute intervals (when I’m enjoying the devil’s lettuce) so that I don’t end up looking at a TV test screen for an hour!
- When I’m in full PN-putter mode, I use longer count-down timers to judge how long I am doing a task. If I’m doing the same task for at least an hour, sitting in front of a computer screen (be it playing the Witcher or TitanFall or Metro Mass Effect on Xbox) or a small screen… I can rest my eyes and/or check in with my fellow human, TS.
- TS and I have “a month-at-a-glance”, a “hot-board”, iCalendars that are reviewed weekly. That assessment session tends to happen Sunday mid-morning, post market-sales-event days. Is streen-time sucking up too much eyeball-time? What does the other spouse see?
- Apple’s iOS settings. I use my iDevces HEALTH settings. If it’s detecting elevated stationary vegitative states with the iDinkeyDoo, it sends a mansplaining notification to me.
- And finally, let’s not forget the resident feline chaos demons. If their needs are being ignored, they will sit their furry asses on the keyboard, chew on my iWatch, or park themselves in front of the lit screen — chasing the cursor. It sounds cute, until they decide to lunge at the screen, scrabble all over the keyboard, scratch the fuck out of your fingertips. Housepanthers. I love ’em.
farm report.
Since I returned home from abroad, TS and I are catching up on necessary tasks to keep our rock ranch safe: we picked up (19-1) bags of gravel from Wilson’s Building Supplies for the propane torpedo installation, and shlepped them to the torpedo site, blowing out TS’ forearms; Tobermory COC holiday market;
…clean out the microplastic filter on the washing machine; smoke some cannabis (thank you FO, on ON Highway 6); back-and-forth, 3h trips to Owen Sound; rig up a block and tackle to send worrisome tree #3 away from the explosive propane fuel bottles; attempt to drop that fucking tree #3 with 2 Avenir Propane installer dudes waiting to replace the storage tank;
…witness tree #3 take some cues from a fucking Road Runner cartoon and get hung up on a teeny tiny maple branch (trembling aspen might have a brittle hard core and an elastic trunk, HOWEVER, IT’S NO MATCH TO OTHER HARDWOOD TREE SPECIES; maple and oak are fucking hard… and that’s when their wood’s still green… let it dry out and you can appreciate why it was used on sailing ships and sail masts); load up another 20 bags of hardwood fuel pellets into the boiler hopper;
…get schooled and bear witness to the ground-mounted PV-panel being repositioned (oh… and remain calm despite seeing its axis bolt almost pop out); Ferndale popup; Wiarton popup;
…assembling our 2026 month-at-a-glance schedule, with its associated 2026 mechanical and structural systems checklists; and, have meltdowns about stupid shit plus real-and-present-danger traumatic shit.
When PN is thinking and in the right headspace, he PLANS THE CUT JOB. He doesen’t deviate from the plan. PLAN THE CUT & CUT TO THE PLAN. Chainsaw work is exhilarating and fucking awesome. And poor planning or sloppy work can kill, maim and/or destroy my world.
TS’ role was providing OVERWATCH to the project (link). And no, that’s not a euphemism for “hey woman, hold my beer”. {{{{{{btw, I have a sick sense of humour; you’re welcome to walk up to TS and use that misguided-and-misogynist term on my spouse; I’ll get the beef jerky, fire up my iDoohickey, and watch you get… re-educated}}}}}}
What’s significant about the above 10 images: they gave me more confidence in my abilities. And I’m preparing myself to deal with larger and more dangerous trees in our farm house south lawn.
I now know what additional equipment (2-3000kg marine mooring braided line) and resources I’ll need to acquire for more dangerous trees south of our home… including asking my neighbour MS to provide auxiliary spotting services.
TS was empowered. Avenir Energy’s crew watched me do my thing with respect. TS enacted her OVERWATCH commands by stopping me from wasting time with the leaning-tree-of-stupid… to me to stop fighting with tree #3… assure me it was good enough… and get the Avenir crew back online.
TS, you kept me safe and the project rolling! Does TS have a tactical mind? Affirmative. Fucking A+…Level 4+… alpha team… She’s the A-team (she’s the the cunning Colonel John [jane] ”Hannibal” Smith). Translation = nice.
after-action report. October 28 to november 5, 2025.
Otherwise known as, soooooooooooooooo how was your trip back to Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada? Smirk.
You might pick up that I had a complicated trip to my family out west. Yes, there was a part of the trip that was purely recreational. My brother-in-law & sister picked me up in a gorgeous diesel pickup, that had double the head-room of my TACO. I was able walk around my sister household and enjoy its harvest theme. I was able to observe how my sister has developed an organized FLOW in the home.
I marveled at how my brother-in-law has carefully landscaped the lot and added a fantastic trail at the bottom of the hill. He has made a stunning property that is DRAMATIC when you enter past the upper gate.
I witnessed some mind-boggling visual effects as the sunrise caused differential heating of the forest floor and its (by necessity) selectively logged property lines. Some stumps appeared on fire with columns of steam billowing out of their hollowed out stumps… its the partial result of the fungal colonies heating up and thus ramping up their cellular respiration and that results in water vapour being released and then condensing into little moving clouds shooting out the stump’s naturally formed chimney. Since there’s holes and gaps at the bottom of the stump where the root ball begins, a convection current resulted, amplifying the effect.
I was thrilled to see how my niece and nephew have grown up into young adults (in their 20-23 year old range) and how they are each tackling life.
My niece, S, experienced heartbreak; is now wiser than 4-5 years ago; has a full-time job as a server at a restaurant; is discovering good wines (Uncle Neem and Niece-S went to the liquor store and I purchased quality mid-priced beverages for the household [the Mister Neem show made the cashiers guffaw… with S saying….. ohhhhh Uncle Paul… now, now, don’t get over-excited… you knowwwww what happened last time]… I’m paraphrasing, dear reader); experienced S’s defensive-assertive driving skills, thus I think she’s ready for my province’s infamous Macdonald–Cartier Freeway — the four-oh-one AKA The Kings Highway 401… or… shudder… the Autobahn of Woe, Ontario Highway 400, The Ontario-to-Barrie Highway AKA getmethefuckoffthis12lanespeedfreakracetrack; and, is taking courses at local GVRD colleges. Aaaaand, S is a vegitarian and has a proper diet. Where will my niece go next? Uncle-Rock-Farmer Neem is curious.
And then there’s my nephew, L. He’s a driven young, 21-year old man. He went to Las Vegas and returned! I’m going to bet he had many people on the Vegas strip give him hockey cards. He must have said, GOLLY. HOCKEY CARDS?! SURE, I’LL TAKE 1… AND THAT 1… AND THAT ONE TOO, while the hawkers were doing their signature whriiillllp-SLAP with their CALLING cards {{{yeah yeah, I know. Those AREN’T hockey cards… TS and I collected them all, I culled out the grooviest ones… the most NSFW ones… the funniest ones… and I added them to my scrapbook}}}}. Logan’s not naive and his mum and dad raised him to be smart. Let’s talk about L’s smarts: (a) he loves Toyota trucks and is seeking out a Hilux Unicorn that has a diesel powerplant; (b) he loves cutlery; (c) he’s building his journeyman hours with his dad; (d) he’s taken up welding & he doesn’t fool around with it; (e) he’s taking more trades courses to hopefully become a master carpenter; (f) he shares my interest in RESPONSIBLE use of herb; (g) he cleans up after himself in the kitchen and will risk making dinner for others; (h)-(i)-to-(j) he’s willing to help my mum get her meal {{{with the WestJet fork I had to do John Wick shoe-fu to acquire, riiiight, L?}}}} at the family table, while whipping out the guitar to strum some chords for grandma; and, (k)… K.
K. Who is this newcomer into the household? There’s someone in L’s life that I had the privilege to meet. I won’t reveal K’s name here because that’s none of your business! What I will say is that K impressed the ever loving beejeezus out of me. K is witty; what she lacks in height, she makes up for having the fortitude to take their German Sheppard Guinness (AKA – a good boy, well trained dog, a doofus) out for late night walks; she’s technically minded (K was casually watching YouTube videos about replacing high performance LED headlights in vehicles, that then led to ripping apart and rebuilding a power-plant, while eating her lunch [WTF?!]); K’s the same age I was when I met TS, 35 years ago; K’s Romanian and she and I shared ridiculous stories about family gatherings (eat eat eat here’s-some-cash eat eat let’s field-dress-a-bear eat eat let’s-show-respect-to-the-game-we-just-killed); K works like a demon at the local Starbucks; and,… most importantly IMHO… she kept up with my witty jokes (or some would say witless pinball-ricochetting ramblings [fair… I have a circus-of-the-disquieting in my kopff). K, it was my honour to meet you. I won’t put pressure on you, as your relationship with L is about L&K&Guinness-The-Good-Dog. Not me. Not your parents. And certainly not oh-my-g*d-what-will-our-friends-think. Trust your instincts.
So, I told you about the wonderful profound and pleasant parts of my trip to British Columbia. Here’s the main reason I had to make this trip sooner than later — My sister and I are shared executors (what we call joint-executors here in Ontario) for my mum. She’s 87 years old and resides in a studio suite with the family. I had to do an in-depth, some would say invasive, investigation about whether my mum’s final affairs are/were in order. I also had to figure out my mum’s cognitive abilities (from a lay person’s point of view [I’m not a physician]).
I’ve lived through 4 deaths and estate-dispensation in the last 2-5 years: Laurel Amalia, Harvey Schwartz, Rein Neem, and Sharon Neem. Reader, you know about my relationship with Rein-dad and Sharon-stepmom so I won’t fucking go there in this blog essay! And I had to bear witness to the anguish that TS and my brother-in-law have had to traverse with their parents. The drama for all of that is still ongoing!!!
AES and TS helped me assemble a clear-eyed, non-sentimental checklist for me to figure out what my mum has ready… where is it… proof that it’s present… and what to do when my mum’s POA must be activated. I needed to see my mum face-to-face, and ask her some DEEPLY PERSONAL questions about her final wishes.
By the half-way point of my investigation (sometime’s social) trip, I was able to get the answers for the questioned I needed to know… so that I could support my sister, C. As she will be the first-responder and have to enact Power Of Attorney if my mum’s mental infirmity comes into question.
I am now able to support my sister AS AN EQUAL… AS A PEER… AS AN ADULT WHO IGNORED HIS SISTER FOR OVER THREE DECADES.
There’s now an opportunity for me to talk to C… with me, as a less-angry adult. C and I are finally building a loving relationship. We can legitimately support each other as siblings. She and I were both subjected to profound abuse & neglect growing up. How we responded to it and our fates is different. Not right. Not wrong. Different pathways to living past our 50s.
My sister and I have now established Project-Mom-A*****.
- It’s set up on secure cloud storage. With redundant hardcopy & scanned field notes.
- Monday-Wednesday-Friday 5-15 minute touch-down video calls from Ontario to British Columbia.
- Telephone logs. Wills. POA. Funeral home workbooks filled out in mum’s handwriting.
- Inventory of sentimental items. What are my mum’s wishes for her valuables?
- My mum’s final wishes, documented.
- A step-by-step plan ready for when my mum dies.
- Proof that mum’s funeral is 100% paid and active. Where does she want her ashes scattered. And where she does NOT want her remains to be kept.
- And more importantly, how to keep my mum’s dignity in her twilight years. There IS something called a living will. It’s now being implemented & fine-tuned for my mum.
- I want my mum to be confident that when she goes to bed every night, everything is going to be okay.
- Her 55-year-old-son and 51-year-old-daughter are going keep talking with each other…
- shoot the sh*t…
- be be kind to each other.
- They can build on their experiences and celebrate their differences.
- Starting November 5, 2025 = Every night, I want my mum to smile and say it’s okay to go to sleep and not be afraid of the dark.
While in Maple Ridge, BC: On average, I was burning on about 3-4 hours of sleep a night. I also experienced the time change after the 3-4th night in a different province. I was brutally jetlagged. I was/am now 100% SSRI-free (so my GAD & PTSD is now purely talk-CBT-meditation therapy controlled). I saw my dead father’s memorabilia about the property, with its expected consequences on my memory. My diet was different.
I was note-taking constantly. I silently witnessed & documented dynamics that I needed to process and internalize… as my mum’s POA and co-executor. I had to bite my tongue when I witnessed worrisome behaviour. I had some of my preconceptions tested and in some cases shattered.
I had family members come to me privately and express their fears, frustrations, hopes, and dreams about family. I did my best to let each person “tell me their truths” without me being an asshole and judging them or mansplaining to them. I put my pen and pencil down, squared off with the family member, STFU, and let them talk to me.
As I joked with S and K, I’m like a seagull consultant or manager. I fly in. Flap my arms around. Shit on everything. Make lots of noise. Swoop around like a maniac. Eat! Joke! Preen my feathers. Shit some more. And fly away East to that place called ONTARIO. With the people in Maple Ridge wondering what-the-fuck-was-that-all-about!!!
To maintain data-integrity and help me slow down racing thoughts and elevated heart-rate, I was doing all of my documentation in cursive. Nothing was ever erased… errors and bullshit were crossed out with a ruler and never self-censored. I documented like I used to do back in my prior careers: like my field note taking as a SERT, a food inspector, a production line manager, a fish farmer, and a high school science teacher teaching at-risk teenagers. I used my iPhone as a data collection device, with photos uploaded to Project Mom-A and then deleted-purged the images from my local storage. I’m a visual learner and I had to use pictures to do my photo-journalism.
On Sunday, November 2, 2025. I was cognitively impaired and mentally exhausted after this investigation, this fact-finding-mission as an adult son. I self-censored myself for as long as possible. I made a rash decision, and I had to endure the ire of the household.
I then had some very unpleasant accusations hurled at me, and I decided to defend myself. I spoke MY TRUTHS. Not shrill. Zero stuttering. Thunderous. Clear. Concise. Coherent. Zero-fucks-given… all the family shit unearthed and said openly. I gladly broke the rules that my cousin said to me earlier in the year, “don’t criticize Rein nor USA presidents in front of THEM”. I was 1, 2, 3 logical. And 100% complete. I also spoke to my mother as adult-to-adult. I spoke to my sister as a peer, my equal. I stood my ground, while kneeling in front my mum.
No more diplomacy. I scared my mum and she would have slapped me if she could get out of her walker. She threatened me.
I told her, yes…. you could slap me… and yes, you are my mother…. However, I will use this tone with you if you continue to try and infantilize me. I am your Power Of Attorney and co-executor. I’m doing my job. A job you assigned me, for free. As a sense of duty to you, mum, I am willing to continue this job. I will continue to do this job until you change your will and/or delete me from your POA.
After that stunned silence, my mum, C, and I were able to remove ourselves from the toxic, public venue in the house and continue the conversation in private in my mum’s studio. Door closed. My mum allocated her valuables to C, to me, and determined who should get what.
If you’ve read my prior posts, you’ll know what I’m talking about (wrt childhood and sub-21 year old trauma). I haven’t share everything with the blog. During the November 2nd event, I shared some of the OTHER abuses provided to me by my Rein-dad. If you want to know details, you can find me on more private social media platforms and I will share it with you.
What I will say is this: if you see something, say something. Silence = Death. Sure, “it gets better”… BUT if someone accuses you of being a p*ssy, f**got, or weak if you whine and complain about being made to toughen up… ignore them. Report violence to a trusted stranger. If that trusted stranger betrays you or doesn’t believe you, you tell them to fuck off. And you go to the next trusted person.
If you have no trusted friends. If you’re alone… Here’s a link to Canada’s crisis help line.
The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) also publishes resources how YOU can help someone else in crisis. Here’s a link to their site. (i) By Their Side: a step-by-step guide for adults helping youth with their mental health; (ii) Talking to teens about mental health; (iii) “Carry it” toolkit to prevent opioid overdose; (iv) overdose prevention; (v) preventing suicide; (vi) Social support; (vii) Supporting a colleague and/or staff; and, (iix) Supporting a loved one.
I’m going down the CMHA hobbit-hole. It’s deep. It’s quite pleasant. Not depressing. As an ex-administrator used to say to us staff members, “necessary for some, good for everybody”… CMHA hosts additional satellite websites (intriguing names): BounceBack. Intranet. Mental Health Week. Not Myself Today. Resilient Minds. Ride Don’t Hide. Peer Support Canada.
And where will I be going this Monday? Why, to the Bruce Men’s Shed of course! Link.
TS believed everything I ever revealed to her about my childhood, being a teenager, being a Sea Cadet, being a 20-something-year-old man, and how I’ve struggled with trauma since then. TS believes me when I say that when I look in the mirror, I see Rein. And my mum. And I witness something ELSE.
When I say I’d use deadly force to protect TS, that’s not romantic horseshit. And I’ll tell you this, dear reader, TS feels the same way right back at me. She would carefully, with RBF, methodically execute eye-for-an-eye retribution if my personal safety was ever violated. Old Testament. Old school. Choose whatever cliche you want and insert it {{{here}}}. TS and I have been together for over thirty years. That does something to the mind, no?
TS and I are a team. A couple. 2 birds of a feather. 2 middle-aged-young house-panthers who work together to open up the forbidden jar of cat-treats. BEFORE we leave a trail of destruction in our human existence, we will use legal, reasonable and civil de-escalation methods. Yes. Yes. Yes.
oh ffs, Farmer-Paul. give me something nice to look-at-read. November 16 afterword…
The Westjet flights from Toronto… to Edmonton… to Abbotsford. I was drinking heavily. With its consequences. C&T picked me up and took me to their place (thanks eh).
And then my personal party times from Abbotsford… to Calgary… and then back home to Toronto, where I was met by TS bearing Monster Donuts, Fantasia apple fritters, and dinner for late in the week — multi-layered stacked Italian lasagna (TS, SR, and RW recommended that savory surprise)….
It was called DONUT MONSTER. They’re in Hamilton. Seek them out.
Musings about the above 10 images: our 4-5h flight from Calgary to Toronto was a 99.9% all women-staffed crew. They were assigned a high altitude flight, through turbulence, with a 100.1% packed plane (insufficient over-head baggage space [since I paid for premium Zone 1 seating, I was waved through with my carry-on]). The cabin crew flowed and ebbed. Smooth with all the babies in the back.
My captain was as cool as a cucumber. She let the young pup first officer (0.1% of crew) fly at altitude and possibly do a take-off and landing. My WestJet captain allowed this, so the young man can log flight hours into a HUGE and FRANTIC Canadian airport.
To my Westjet captain = I was high on ethanol, chocolate, good food, good vibes, and fucking relieved that I was returning to a home that makes sense to me... you let the first officer be all grown up and pilot a jet with over 600 souls behind you.
If you had to delay at Pearson Airport, my fevered mind made up WILD ACTIONS YOU COULD TAKE. I mused to myself you having to go into a holding pattern over YYZ, and then looking your first officer in the eye… his big blue puppy dog eyes… and saying…
Here’s your test question, young man. You’re in a commercial jet. And you suddenly see a plume of smoke climbing up from a field… towards your jet. You have 68 seconds before impact. Why 68 seconds? Because that’s how long I had to evade such a SAM back in my Canadian Armed Forces days… back in Kandahar… or was it Kuwait?… or was it Bagdad?
My my my (((said in the same tone as Morgan Freeman))). Time does fly (((as she dreamily thinks back to her salad dayz as a combat pilot or tanker-woman))).
Young man, stop crying. First Officers don’t cry like a helpless young things. I know your mother and she vouched for you… to me! I asked you a question. What. Would. You. Do? No… no you may not go to the bathroom.
Young man… you now have 48 seconds left until that SAM kills us and the 600 refugees in the back, who’ve witnessed horrors Canadians back home will NEVER understand.
28 seconds left. Young man, how will you SAVE MY PLANE…? … … … … Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
Oh well. Fine. I’ll show you how to to do evasive manoeuvres with a Boeing 737-300. Or rather with a C-40, T-43, and/or P8 Poseidon.
Young man: Strap in & grid your loins. Facemask ON. WHERE’S YOUR HELMET? TOO LATE… NO TIME. TIME FOR SAM. Adjust your personal enriched Tri-Ox gas supply to 100%. STOP YER GRINNIN’ AND DROP YER LINEN. Barrel roll in 3… 2… 1. 🙂
What can I say about the above 10 images: the comic The Oatmeal mused about how food tastes different at altitude, in a pressurized vessel. There’s some freaky physiological and neurological changes to the human body. The Oatmeal’s author, Matthew Imman (and a different home link), waxed poetically about how 7-Up or Ginger Ale was magic sky juice to him. For me, it was MacDonald’s freshly brewed coffee = black, hot, 3 sugar. With a Quebec-made butter cookie coated with honest-to-DOG chocolate.
The secret to good apple fritters is simple: use fresh oil, use a lot of cooking apples, don’t fucking skimp on the spices, and fresh dough… not premade nor frozen from a month ago. Charge a fair price (M&T, includes some money to put away for eventual retirement, plus a living wage for the employees) = PN, TS, SR, and RW will buy it.
Donut Monster and Sweet Paradise are local Hamilton businesses that are worth your patronage. Support small businesses. Shop local. Tim Horton’s industrial-donuts and Loblaws with their frozen pasta meals… SP can’t compete with Loblaws. They don’t need your business. If you can afford to eat out (or buy prepared meals), tip generously (as long as the serving staff are not being arseholes).
I paid a significant premium to get a “good seat on the jet plane” with food, bum and leg space, metal utensils, and enough baggage allowance. It’s elitist as hell. And I didn’t pay a carbon tax for all the effluent & emissions my Boeing 737-300 was spewing into the environment. It’ll break me, but the next time I have to visit British Columbia, I’m taking the train. Or, I’m driving across Canada in a hybrid (I’d rather let someone else do the driving, thus, the train).
BCB&B, neemtree, bdb, and blog 