A difficult day, but getting better

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

One more day.

One more day after today, and then I’m in for surgery.

It was not a good day today.

Oddly, for the past couple of days, I have been feeling not just frequently hungry, but famished. I don’t have much appetite, but I make myself eat adequate portions yet, only a couple of hours later, I’m famished again. This morning, I woke feeling so hungry, I felt like I would pass out if I didn’t get some food in me.

I did manage to get the outside cat feeding done first. I later found out my daughters were having a difficult time, too.

I got a head count of 14 this morning, as they enjoyed their cat soup. From the state of the sun room, it looks like raccoons were digging around and moving things that cats just don’t have the bulk to move themselves.

The cats definitely are more comfortable with my cat whisperer daughter than with me. Even my older daughter has been able to walk up to and pet the Shrine Lady. You can see her in the second image, eating cat soup outside. She had been in the sun room but ran out with my moving around, even though I had made no effort to approach her. Meanwhile, my daughters have even managed to pet the remaining calico. I saw her this morning. She ate from the tray under the water bowl house and won’t let me anywhere near her. I ended up not topping up the water bowls because I didn’t want to scare them away by dragging the hose around.

I then made myself a large, high protein breakfast, as per my instructions in the homework I got from the cancer clinic. I had to make myself finish it. That whole “being hungry but having no appetite” thing is unpleasant, to say the least. Unfortunately, my pain levels kept getting worse, to the point I had difficult standing up straight and had to walk… in an… interesting posture, shall we say… to reduce strain on the pertinent areas. My daughter had to do the driving and most of the dashing around today.

Which she was having trouble with, too.

I’d considered leaving a bit later, closer to when the post office closed, as I thought a package might be in. I wanted to give the postal clerk time to process things. I checked tracking and found the expected delivery date had changed from tomorrow to Oct. 21, which is the same date as a second package. The depots the packages were in were also in different provinces. There was no way they’d be in this week at all.

So, we headed out about an hour earlier than I originally planned, but still stopped at the post office to get our regular mail. My daughter had to go in to get the mail while I stayed in the truck. It was good that we stopped, because my daughters got what looked like Government of Canada envelopes, and I got my annual notice about our vehicle renewal registration.

My daughter also came back with the package I had thought might come in today, but was suddenly listed as coming in on Oct. 21. So very strange.

As for my letter about our vehicle registration, it also included my driver’s license renewal reminder for next month. I have “safe driving” discounts, so the $55 for the license had a $15 discount. There was, however, another $20 driver’s license fee added on, so the total is $60. One fee goes to the province for issuing the license. I believe the other goes to the insurance company for processing it.

The monthly payments for the insurance on the truck, meanwhile, have gone down again. I have enough merit points on my license that it’s been going down every year. Not by much, but every little bit helps.

Our next stop was in town at the hardware store. My daughter went in with my cards to ask if they had any Roof Melt and pick up a bucket, if they had any in stock. It turned out that it was too early. They’ll be getting some later. I should remember to call them and ask them to set one aside for me and let me know when the inventory has arrived, so we can come in and get it right away.

From there, we finally made it to the pharmacy, and I had to go in for that one. I had to let my daughter take the walker out for me and get it set up before I could even get out of the truck. I felt a bit guilty about about that, as it was clearly painful for her to get it out of the truck for me. She was caning it the whole time herself, and looked like she could have used a walker of her own!

My daughter had her own prescription to refill, but they couldn’t do it today. Tomorrow is their delivery day and it will be ready for then. Which means she will have it before we leave to spend the night at my brother’s.

Then I talked to them about my husband’s refills, and they weren’t able to fill those today, either. They needed to fax his doctor for more refills on one of them. So I made arrangements for those to be delivered tomorrow as well. The pharmacist that helped me looked them up from last time to see the cost, and they weren’t covered, it seems, by either his private nor the province’s prescription insurance. Either that or his 75% coverage still left him with almost $150 to pay.

Then I asked to get a refill on my T3s, but also asked if I had any other painkiller prescriptions on my file. I knew the tramacet wouldn’t be there, as it was only for 14 days, but I couldn’t remember if I still had tramadol available.

I did not.

That’s okay. I just had to wait about 20 minutes to get my 3 month’s worth of T3s. That was less than $45 for the 3 months, after insurance covering 75%.

During this whole time, I was heavily relying on my walker, even as something to lean against while sitting on one of their very comfortable waiting area chairs.

We had one more stop before going home, this time at the grocery store. My husband needed distilled water, which happened to be on sale, so it worked out to be less than what it would have cost at Walmart, for his four 4L jugs. He requested some “healthy crunchies”, which is never easy to find. He was happy with what I managed to find, though. Since I’m supposed to be low carb/high protein, I found some snack meats for both of us – also on sale, which was nice. Since we’re all going to be having much to deal with over the next while, I ended up getting boxed cereal for all of us – all on sale – even though I won’t actually be able to eat any of it for a while. My daughter remembered that we had not picked up pasta at Costco, and some brands were on sale, so we got a few packages. It was a good sale, so there wasn’t much choice left on the shelf. There was a really good sale on a brand of pasta sauce, too, but those shelves were completely empty! Even with all the discounts, it still came out to just over $100, but it came out of my husband’s budget, not our regular grocery budget, which was nice.

Thankfully, by the time we were done there, I was finally starting to feel a bit better and the pain was slowly starting to pass. Which is good, because my daughter was in so much pain that she was trying – and failing – to hide, I could get the walker into the truck myself. Normally, with heavier stuff like the water bottles to bring in, we would have backed up to the house to unload, but my daughter said she wasn’t up to getting back into the cab again to park in the garage, and she didn’t want me driving, so she parked straight into the garage. Thankfully, I have this convenient walker and I used that to carry the heaviest bag with the water bottles, along with another bag, to the house with it.

I did stop along the way to check out the sunflowers.

The Mammoth sunflowers are still blooming, and are pretty much the only thing left for the pollinators (the alpine strawberries are also still blooming). Today is a bit warmer, but it’s still cool enough that the pollinators weren’t moving very much!

The plan had been to take advantage of today’s warmer weather to get things done outside, but that’s not working out. Both my daughters are having issues preventing them from physically doing the stuff today. As for myself, while the pain has finally passed by the time I started writing this, if I try to do any of this stuff myself, it would be back again in a very short time; probably worse. I’ll be heading out to do the outside cat feeding soon and will at least walk around the yard to get some fresh air and sunshine, but that’s pretty much my limit right now.

One more day.

One more day of this, then it’s surgery day! I am so looking forward to it! If all goes to plan, I’ll have my 6 week recovery period, and then I’m going to once again be the most able bodied person in the household again. 😄 By then it will be December, though. Anything we don’t manage to get done in the garden by then will have to wait until spring, unless we have a ludicrously mild winter. Which is possible. We’ve had them before. I recall seeing a local photo, taken in the early 1880’s, of farmers plowing their fields – on Christmas Eve!

A thought occurred to me, though. My daughters both have appointments in the city on November 3 and 4. My older daughter’s appointment is at the Women’s hospital. The original plan had been that I would drop them off, then leave the downtown area and hang out at a shopping area, with free parking, until they messaged me to come get them.

I will still be restricted from driving at that point. Which means we could park where I did last time and I would keep adding $2 to the machine ever half hour until they are done. Or my daughter would have to drive around the maze of streets to find a parking spot and we all walk over, which I would be very limited in doing. Or we would drop off my oldest daughter and my younger daughter would drive us to a shopping area with free parking and stay with me. The hospital has free wifi, so my older daughter, who has a phone but no plan and doesn’t want one, could message us to come back for her.

For her sister’s appointment, the creepy clinic does at least have a whole 3 free parking spots available, just behind the building.

It’s frustrating that we haven’t been able to get my younger daughter her full license by now, and she has to have someone with a full license beside her when she drives. We can’t use our truck for her road test, with the various dashboard lights on. We know what they are on for, but the tester can’t accept that. She has to get 2 hours with a driving instructor before she can do a road test, and we’ve heard of places where they do the 2 hours and then the road test is booked for right after, using the driving school’s vehicle, but there is no one local that does that.

Her sister, meanwhile, can’t even take the written test until she gets her new glasses prescription and finally gets new glasses, and a road test isn’t going to happen until after she has her own surgery. Whenever that will be. Same surgery as what I’m getting in a couple of days, but they’re talking about a 6 month wait, still. Somehow, she’s not considered as urgent as me, even though it nearly killed her.

Bizarre.

But I digress.

Time to go outside and feed some kitties for the evening.

The Re-Farmer

Costco stock up trip – finally: this is what $486 looks like

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

$485.98, to be exact.

I honestly wasn’t sure if I was up to the trip today, health wise. Pain levels increased again during the night. Not especially bad, except the bleeding suddenly increased, too. I found myself feeling quite dizzy in the morning. I thought, at first, it was because I was really hungry but, even after I ate, the dizziness stayed. I didn’t think I’d lost that much blood, though!

My daughters, meanwhile, ended up not being able to sleep at all last night, so if I couldn’t drive, neither could my daughter.

In the end, though, I found myself feeling before by the time we were ready to leave, and kept feeling better the whole time. My daughter, meanwhile, was able to get some sleep during the drive in, though she still wasn’t feeling well throughout the day. Bad PMOS (formerly PCOS) day.

We got it done, though! Under budget, too, though I did skip a couple of things I would have liked to get, but couldn’t justify the expense. Others, I didn’t get because we simply couldn’t get to the displays. Too many people blocking the aisles.

On the way out, we did stop at a gas station and put in $30 in gas. Just enough to make sure we didn’t drop below half a tank before getting to the Costco. Surprisingly, the gas prices were down to $1.689/L When we got gas in town on the way to Walmart on Sunday, the prices were $1.829 When we reached the Costco, the first thing we did was fill the tank. The price of regular gas there was $1.669 Usually, Costco gas is at least 5 or 10 cents lower than elsewhere, which suggests that prices in the city were still high. Odd, that. Filling the tank cost $61.74

For a moment, I considered using a handicap parking spot but figure there wouldn’t be any spaces, so we parked further out. While toodling by on my walker, my daughter using her cane, I was glad I didn’t bother trying. Every single space was filled, and they have a lot of them. That’s pretty typical.

The shopping itself went rather well, in general. The only frustration was all the people who kept abandoning carts in the middle of the aisle while looking at things, stopping in bottlenecks to get their free samples, or just hanging out and chatting, leaving little space for a cart to get through, never mind a flat cart. Several times, I just gave up and we turned around to another aisle, skipping whatever we would have gotten otherwise. It if was just one person, I’d have politely asked to get by, but it wasn’t. It was usually half a dozen carts, with their scattered people, blocking almost the entire aisle!

I really, really dislike shopping.

Anyhow. This is what $485.98 looks like.

With the trip we managed on Walmart, it meant we needed a smaller Costco trip than usual. We did include a couple of treats.

Okay… bottom of the basket stuff…

We got two rotisserie chickens. The cashier caught herself accidentally scanning on of them twice. There’s a case of Monster energy drinks, which my daughter sent funds for. More toilet paper, because we just can’t really have too much toilet paper in this household. For the cats, we got two 11.6kg bags of kibble; one for the inside cats, one for the outside cats. Given this is the middle of the month already, this might last us until the next stock up trip, just over 2 weeks from now. We did not get more canned cat food.

We loaded the belt first with cold/frozen stuff and heavy stuff. They had 4L jugs in 3% milk, so we got one of those (normally, we get 2L cartons locally). There is no difference in price at Costco, since milk is price controlled by the government, but my daughter informed me that we were out. There’s a 3 pack of 2L oat milk for my daughters. I picked up a brie, because it was on sale. Two panini packs for sandwiches. A block of Old Cheddar cheese (we still have some at home, so I just got the one). I wanted a heat and eat for my husband, and the same weight of dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets cost less than the ones that weren’t in fancy shapes, so we got the dino nuggets.

I got only 3 pounds of butter, as I’d already picked a couple up at Walmart. The name brand butter at Walmart was a better price than the Kirkland brand Costco butter.

We got a 2 pack of butter chicken sauce that was on sale, some peanut butter, and a large container of canola oil. There’s a double flat of eggs. We also got a 2 pack of loose mild Italian sausage meat, and our treat was a pack of 120 mini Halloween chocolate. We don’t do Halloween – no one comes out this far – so it’s just for the four of us.

I remembered to grab a 2 pack of parchment paper; something we find we use quite a bit, making washing up much easier. For bread, I got just one 2 pack of rye bread and our usual 2 packages of wraps, but I also picked up two large bags of the triangular ciabatta buns. There is also a large sushi platter for the girls, which my daughter sent funds for.

There we have it. Only about $80 of this trip was cat stuff, too.

My husband let us know, after the Walmart trip, that he had started his last bottle of distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. Costco doesn’t carry that. We considered making a side trip to a Walmart on the way out, as they have the best prices for that, but in the end we decided it wasn’t worth it. Tomorrow, I’ll be going in to pick up prescription refills for my husband, and my daughter has refills as well, so we’ll pick up distilled water in town tomorrow, instead. The difference in price is not enough to make up for the extra cost of gas to get them at a Walmart. I need to remember to stop at a Home Hardware as well, and see if they have any Roof Melt in stock. We need to make sure no ice dam forms over the sun room roof again. Even with the new roof, we had water starting to leak into the sun room because of the ice dam that forms.

Once we had the truck loaded and headed for home, we did make a stop at a gas station just outside the city to use the facilities. I got some snacks and a drink for my daughter, and remembered to pick up some gum for after my surgery. I still find it so weird that they actually tell you to chew gum as a way of reducing gas. Gum can often lead to the opposite effect, but they also say for 5 minutes, before or after eating, so… maybe that makes the difference? Either way, I now have gum.

Which reminds me. I got a call on my cell phone while driving out. My daughter was able to answer and put it on speaker phone for me. It turned out to be the hospital. They were looking at my very short medications list. I have one prescription I’ve been on for many years, morning and night, and I need to stop taking that as of today. I can still take my T3s, though. I should see if I can get more of those while at the pharmacy tomorrow, as I am out of the stronger stuff I had only a 2 week prescription for.

I also remembered to call the eye doctor and reschedule the joint appointment for my older daughter and I. I booked it after they called to reschedule, but before I had a surgery date. Being only a week after the surgery date, I figured it wasn’t a good idea to do it so quickly. I wouldn’t be driving myself, anyhow, since I would be getting the eye dilation drops, but it still seems too soon. It is now booked for the second week of November; almost 4 weeks after surgery. That should be safe.

Just a few more days. I am so looking forward to getting it over and done with!

Stocking up takes on a whole new meaning when we’re not sure when we’ll be able to go shopping again.

The Re-Farmer

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

It was a chilly, rainy day today, but I’m good with that. We could be having a snow storm, as we’ve had in the past since moving here!

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers, and Happy Columbus Day to my readers from the US!

My older daughter ended up doing all of the meal today, starting with a well seasoned pork roast, done low and slow. After that had been in the oven for a couple of hours, she seasoned carrots and parsnips that her sister and I harvested yesterday, and set them into the oven to roast near the meat for the last hour. Once that was pretty much done, she cooked the pasta her sister chose yesterday. She ended up combining a package of ravioli and a package of tortellini together. I hadn’t even noticed that her sister had picked a tortellini. 😄 Then we had the lemon curd pie for desert. It was all very delicious.

My contribution was doing dishes, when I was able to. I didn’t sleep last night. Initially, it was because pain levels started increasing just as I was getting ready for bed. That kept getting worse before finally fading away after several hours. By the time it did, I just couldn’t sleep. It didn’t help that I kept hearing cats doing things they shouldn’t, when they weren’t suddenly all over me any time I tried to roll over, suddenly wanting all of the attention while somehow managing to step on various sensitive spots in the process!

Since I was awake anyhow, I got up to do the morning cat feeding, thinking I might be able to fall asleep after getting some fresh air and exercise.

Fresh air and exercise didn’t happen. It was raining too much.

I did, however, count either 14 or 15 cats this morning.

In the tray on the right is, I think, Mochrie, sharing the tray with Midnight and Sweetie. In the top metal tray is Gouda, Fluffy, Fancy Pants and a short haired tabby that I think the girls have named, but I can’t remember.

In the bottom tray is Colby – and no, we have not been able to get him to treat his ears- next to Lady Grey, Stinky? Or Colin. Then there is the Shrine Lady, who was incredibly nervous around me. I did get to touch her, but she was not happy about it.

At outside feeding stations, Pinky was at her favorite bowl in the isolation shelter. I spotted Sprout (who I still think is actually Sprig, but she doesn’t stay still long enough for me to be sure). There was also another white and grey – when I don’t get to see them long enough, or they move around so much, I can’t tell which is Stinky, Colin or Mochrie, even though they do actually look quite different from each other. I may have seen another grey tabby that was probably Bobert. That’s when I counted 15, but when I tried counting again, I kept getting only 14.

I did try to go back to bed after doing the morning cat feeding, but it just did not happen. Mostly because of cats. My daughter came in one time and counted 5 on me at the same time. Including Butterscotch leaning most of her body onto my face. I admit, I’m a sucker for Butterscotch, since she it one of the two remaining cats my late father cared for, and it took so long to finally get her to accept the indoor life.

I ended up doing the evening outside cat feeding, too. The rain was much less, so I stayed out to do a few things, like bring some stuff under the canopy tent back into the cat side of the sun room. I still haven’t figure out the best way to set up the heat lamps. In the past, I had an old closet door set across the room, over the food trays, and could attach the clamp lamps to that. That was when I had two matching shelves on opposite sides of the room. With the wire cube shelf set up the way it is now, none of the heights match. I might try using one of the saw horses, but I’d have to secure them to something so the cats don’t accidentally knock it over. I want the lamps set up in the space over where the food trays are, while also not being in the way of putting food into the trays. The heat shields on the lamps get quite hot and I’ve burned the sleeve of my winter coat on them a few times, while reaching to drop some kibble onto a tray.

I also remembered we hadn’t put away all of the garden tools, and they were being rained on, so I took care of that. My younger daughter plans to clean and oil them for the winter, later on.

Once of the things I did before heading to bed last night was go over the package I got from the cancer clinic. There were some things that didn’t match what I was told in person. Turns out that, in my case, I should NOT be eating high carb meals before I start fasting. I should be low carb. When it comes to fluids during the fast, I was told plain coffee, tea, water and apple juice. The package says I can also have clear broth and cranberry juice.

I’m also supposed to bring a couple of packages of gum. It says to chew a stick of gum for 5 minutes, before or after a meal, three times a day. It’s supposed to prevent gas.

My physical restrictions after the surgery include no driving for about 2-4 weeks. No using power tools or machinery. No lifting anything heavier than 10 pounds.

That’s going to drive me nuts!

I am, however, supposed to walk every day and, when I eat, I am to eat while sitting up in a chair, even if eating only a small amount. No breakfast in bed for me! 😄

So I’ve been sort of trying to do as much as possible now, before the restrictions kick in. That will include a trip to Costco tomorrow. Finally. The day after is supposed to be warmer with no rain, so it will be a good time to finally clean the other half of the sun room. Plus, we need to get the garlic in, and we don’t even have a bed ready for that yet. Something my younger daughter is planning to do for me, if we can manage a good weather day and be home at the same time!

While the rain may not be particularly pleasant, I am thankful for it. The haskaps will do better for it, and it’s much preferable to snow!

All in all, I’d say it’s been a very good Thanksgiving Day.

The Re-Farmer

Stocking up: This is what $312 looks like – plus a Grog!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Thankfully, my daughters and I are all feeling better today, recovering from our colds. I actually seem to be recovering faster and never got as sick as they did. Today has been a pretty much zero pain day. My messed up left shoulder bothered me more than anything else, and only if I tried to move it in certain ways.

Which meant we were up to a smaller, non-Costco stock up trip – though with all this, our Costco trip is going to be pretty small, too.

Before heading out, I remembered to grab the collection of hard sided reusable bags from the house and returning them to the truck. I fired up the compressor while sorting them into the truck, so I could check the tires. They didn’t need much topping up, but the front tire on my mother’s car is flat again, so I pumped that up again.

Then I went to open the gate and, on the way back, spotted a furry friend.

Hello, Grog!

We seem to just have the one hanging around this year, and rarely see it. He (she?) is certainly a handsome furball!

Since we were going to the nearest Walmart in the smaller city, we went by a highway we usually cut across to, to avoid driving through many small towns and frequent speed limit changes. With major construction on the highway we normally would take, though, this was a more efficient route. It did mean going through town and I was just under half a tank, so we stopped to put in some gas.

At $1.829/L Last time we went through town, it was $1.799

We did go to Shell station, where my CAA gives me 3¢ off per liter. I got $50 in gas, since I plan to do a fill at Costco. I also picked up some drinks and large bag of beef jerky, since my daughter hadn’t had breakfast. It was cheaper than elsewhere for that size of bag, plus I was able to use points to take $20 off my bill, and my CAA card also gives me 10% off anything bought in the store, so the grand total was about $67, and put me at above 3/4 tank.

Then we took the rather slower route to the Walmart, though it still got us there faster than if we were stuck going through the construction zones. Because of the steep drops where the shoulders normally would be, the speed limits drop significantly, even when no one is actively working. Which has been the biggest complaint I’m seeing on the local highways group. People are wondering what’s going on, because they are seeing so many days with no actual construction happening. The problem turns out to actually be a political one, rather than a construction one. Which doesn’t surprise me in the least, considering which party is in power right now, and who our Premier is.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

Thankfully, things were not all that busy at the Walmart when we got there – I think a lot of people do their celebrating today instead of tomorrow – so we were able to get what we needed rather quickly.

This is what $310.12 looks like.

That’s not even a full cart.

*sigh*

This is what we got for our money.

Top of the list is a package of paper towels (on sale), toilet paper (on sale), a case of canned cat food and two 9.1kg bags of kibble for the outside cats, since we won’t be able to get more 40 pound bags of kibble until Tuesday, at the earliest.

It’s cheap turkey season, so I got a medium sized turkey for $23. I wasn’t planning to get it, but when a whole fresh chicken costs almost $20 right now, getting a turkey for a few bucks more for the freezer just makes sense.

There is a bag of frozen pizza bites for my daughters and chicken nuggets for my husband and I. The fresh pasta packages are ravioli in flavours my daughter chose, one of which will be part of our Thanksgiving dinner. I also got a couple more pounds of butter because, at under $5 each, these are cheaper than Costco.

I got a total of 6 cans of energy drinks; two for me, and my daughter chose the other four flavours for herself and her sister.

I spotted some large couscous pearls and grabbed some. I think I’m the only one that likes them. We also remembered to grab some olive oil; I’ll probably get more at Costco, as the price is much better there, but we’re almost out so we didn’t want to wait. Same with the mayonnaise.

Next on the list, my daughter chose a couple of flavours of coffee creamer, plus some oat milk.

We remembered to grab some argan oil for our brittle, brittle hair. I remembered to look, but was not able to find the type of shoulder brace I was looking for, though.

The cinnamon mini donuts were a treat for the drive home, with enough for the rest of the family, too.

I remembered to look for a de-matting comb. We had to go into the dog section to find it. The one we had has disappeared, and several cats are getting mats in their fur again. Ginger in particular, which is remarkable for a short haired cat! He enjoys being brushed, but he still gets matted, the comb I’m stuck using just can’t get them out, and we don’t want to shave him this late in the season.

Next on the list, we have 2 loaves of white bread, 2 loaves of brown bread, and a lemon crumble pie. We’ve never tried this flavour before and wanted to try is as our Thanksgiving day desert. Last of all is a flat of 30 eggs.

There we have it. That’s just under $300, before taxes.

While I managed to get some lower prices today, the reality is that a lot of the sale prices are still higher than what regular prices were, just a few years ago; none of which can be blamed on the recent tariff wars. I suppose we still got a decent amount for our money, relatively speaking. Counting the de-matting comb, cat supplies was over $100 of it, so about $200 for four adults isn’t too bad.

I have to admit that, now that we’re down to a dozen outside cats, the kibble does last longer. I do wish it was because we adopted cats out, not because they have simply disappeared, though. 😢

When we finally do the Costco shopping, it’s going to be a couple of weeks later than usual. Which will actually come in handy, I suppose, since we’ll be well stocked just before I have my surgery. One less thing to worry about.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: we have parsnips!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This is the first year I’ve tried to grow parsnips, and it was not planned. They went were something else had failed.

They grew incredibly well – at least from what we could see. Huge greenery that got so tall, it grew through the higher raised bed cover we had on this bed, because it’s strong enough to hold protective plastic or netting, plus the weight of cats. For the past while, it was just the wire, nothing else, to keep cats out in general. Once I removed that, not long ago, in preparation for harvesting, the parsnip greens were so tall, the stems on the outside flopped over and couldn’t hold themselves up without the wire.

What I couldn’t see was parsnips.

I had tried probing around the surface of the soil, but could neither see nor feel any roots. I tried pulling some up at one end, some time ago, and there was basically nothing. I was prepared to have a whole lot of paltry roots of the sort I see when carrots or radishes bolt, though no parsnips bolted.

With Thanksgiving dinner happening tomorrow, as I was covering the self seeded tomatoes for the night, I decided to try and harvest some parsnips to go with the carrots my daughter was digging up. She had the garden fork, and the spades are all by the haskaps, so I tried with the flat blade of the ice chipper, first, thinking to loosen the soil beside the parsnips so I could pull them without just tearing the greens right off.

The first thing I noted was there was definitely something there. Not near the surface at all, though. I ended up switching to the tines of an old garden fork that the handle had broken off long ago. We meant to get a new handle and simply forgot. I found it while cleaning up around the house in preparation for winter. The lack of a handle actually came in handy in a raised bed.

It worked much better, though I found I still couldn’t get deep enough!

Yes, we got parsnips!

You can see a couple with tips that broke off because they were deeper than I’d been able to loosen the soil, as well as some surface damage from the tines. The soil surface was about an inch above the tops of the roots. No wonder we couldn’t see them!

I wonder if I’ll find the same thing when we start digging up the beets, growing in the same bed?

This is all I picked for today. Parsnips and carrots can both handle frost, so there’s no hurry to harvest them all. Same with the bunching onions we also picked, to go with our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. I forgot to take the turkey out early enough to thaw, so we’re going to have a pork roast, instead. 😄

All this was done after we did a little stock up trip at Walmart, since we weren’t up to doing Costco, while recovering from colds, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving! We will just make sure to do it on Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest, since my daughter and I will be spending Thursday night at my brothers before my surgery in the city on Friday morning.

We need to be pretty organized ahead of time.

We were starting to run out of things, though, so the Walmart trip had to be done today, if only it the smaller one that’s closer.

Stock up post, coming up, next!

The Re-Farmer

At least a little bit done…

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today, I had hoped to do our second stock up shopping trip.

So much for that.

I woke up with my cold feeling worse. Still not as bad as my daughters have been feeling, but definitely not up to a trip to the city and a stock up shop. Which is getting to be a problem. It doesn’t help that I simply don’t want to go at all in the first place. I don’t want to make the drive. I don’t trust the truck. I don’t want to do the shopping – and certainly not a Costco shop in Thanksgiving weekend!

It turned out to be a very lovely day today. We hit 21C/70F today and, as I write this past 5pm, we are still at 19C/66F. Things are supposed to get quite a bit cooler over the next three days, with overnight lows just barely above freezing.

I did manage to finally get outside in the afternoon and worked on the sun room. I wasn’t physically up to moving things to work on the garden storage side of the room, but I could start setting the cat side up. With temperatures dropping, I want to be able to set up the heat lamps, soon.

It isn’t finished, but this is how far I got, after bringing some trays back at the evening feeding time.

I did not put the big cube cat cage back together again, instead setting the wire frames to make a wall of cubes to put bedding in. I used up all my little dollar store zip ties to secure corners, as the wire walls can pop out of the connectors quite easiliy. We’ve still got scraps of rigid insulation cut to fit the floors of a few cubes, and those got beds and blankets set on them. The insulation is to act as a floor more than anything else. Otherwise, the cats’ feet will fall through the openings, taking the cat beds with them. The smaller cat bed is on the floor, so it doesn’t need the extra insulation layer. The old windshield shade was set on top to act both as a floor that cats can walk on, and a sort of self-warming mat to sit on. Over time, we’ll probably be adding cardboard onto the other cubes to make solid floors in them the cats can walk on.

Other shelves were brought back and a few more cat beds laid out. I had some cardboard pieces that had been on top of the cat cage that won’t be used for that anymore, so I set them on the concrete before putting the larger kibble trays on top.

In the photo, on the left, you can see Colby, the orange and white cat. He’s had scabbing on his neck for a while, but today I realized he has a huge bloody wound and it looks like skin is missing. You can sort of see it in the photo. He seems to have an insanely bad case of ear mites in that ear. I do have some medication for it, from long enough ago that it’s expired. It needs to be injected directly into the ear canal, which is quite difficult to do with outside cats, and is why we still have it. Looking at the instructions, it says it needs to be used in both ears every 24 hours until the bottle is empty, though the bottle is enough for two cats. Being expired, it won’t work as well, but it’s all we have and and we need to at least do something. Getting Colby to allow us to do it, though, is going to be a two person job. Since it needs to be done every 24 hours, it would need to be done with the morning feeding, which is more consistent than the evening feedings when it comes to time.

Next, I need to figure out how to set up the clamp lamps safely. One can be attached to the cube shelf again. We had the second one attached to the mini greenhouse frame near the cat cage. The mini greenhouse is now behind the door and the cat cage is now just cubes. They have to be set up close enough to reach the plug, of course, so that limits things, too. I’m trying to think if one can be attached to the wire cubes, but not have any cats knocking into it while going into the cube beds. One of the issues we had before is that the cats would go under the lamps at feeding time, their tails up in the air, and suddenly we’ve be smelling burnt cat fur. Even with a wire guard over the bulb that one lamp has, their tails still managed to get into the cone and touch the bulb! Ideally, the lamps would be under something that would keep the heat in. In the past, we’ve used old closet doors and the summer door for our basement, but we don’t have the set up to support anything like that anymore. It did give the cats a whole other level of surface to sleep on, though, which they quite liked. It would be good if we could find a way to do something like that again.

At this point, I’m trying to keep access to the large window closer to the inside all open. That window is single pane and has been since before we moved out here. The inside pane having shattered long ago. In the winter, it gets completely frosted. I want to see if I can get a window insulating kit that can cover a window that large. Aside from keeping it from frosting up, it should act as a bit of insulation as well. We’ve tried setting the rigid insulation into the windows in the past, but the sheets are too long and too narrow then, once they were set in, they kept falling off. Plus, the cats really, really like to use that insulation to scratch at!

It isn’t much, but it felt good to at least get that done.

In other things, while I was feeling sicker with the cold, the pain levels didn’t get particularly bad today, which was nice for a change. Hopefully, that will continue tomorrow, and my cold will get better, because we really need to do that second stock up shop! Even if we just go to the nearest Walmart, instead. We might skip Costco altogether at this point.

We shall see how we feel tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Another non-day

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today would have been a good one to get some things done outside. Not to hot, not too cold.

It didn’t happen, of course.

I’ve caught my daughters’ colds.

*sigh*

Well, if I’m going to be sick with a cold, better for it to be now, with time enough to get over it before surgery.

My daughters are both quite sick and trying to stay away from me and my husband as much as possible, though I suppose it’s a bit late to worry about me catching it. Yesterday, my younger daughter was especially ill, but is doing better today. Hopefully, she will be feeling better tomorrow, and I won’t be feeling worse, because we really need to do that Costco shop that’s been delayed over and over!

I did manage to accomplish one thing, though. I’ve worked out the transportation issues for my surgery. Instead of us being on the road by 7am, trying to find parking and so on, we will instead go to my brother’s on Thursday to spend the night. My SIL will drop us off in the morning, then come back to get us whenever it’s all done. Then my daughter will drive us home from their place.

Have I mentioned I have the best SIL? I usually say that about my brother, but it absolutely applies to my SIL, too!

Meanwhile, I’ve been spending much of the day drinking hot tea with lots of lemon, or soup stock, plus some Nyquil a couple of times. As has become pretty the usual pattern, the pain levels started kicking in in the late morning, and I ended up painkillered up and in bed for most of the afternoon before it just faded away again.

I did try to at least do some crafting this afternoon. Finished off the beaded garland I was crocheting around but had made a mistake on before. I had worked on it for a while before realizing the shells I was crocheting today looked quite different from the ones I’d been doing before. Turns out I’d completely forgotten how I’d worked the previous shells, with plans to work another row before I found the mistake that was too far back to be worth fixing. The new shells I was doing looked better, so I just kept it. It’s not like this garland is going to be used by anyone but us. It’s now officially finished, flawed as it it. Then I worked on another work in progress. It was just single crochet being worked to make a solid triangle, and it took me a while to remember what I was making it for. The fact that I was falling asleep while stitching didn’t help my memory any!

Which has become the biggest obstacle to my taking advantage of my forced down time to work on crafts I’ve had to set aside, some for years. I’m falling asleep as I try to do anything.

Ah, well. After the surgery, during my recovery period, that should no longer be as much of an issue, and I hope to be able to do more crafting. Things to keep me busy while on forced mobility restrictions, so I don’t go stir crazy!

At this time next week, the surgery should be done, and I should be on my way home.

If all goes well. Must always have a back up plan, just in case!

The Re-Farmer

More transplants, and I have a date!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This morning I was feeling rather well, while my daughters are both still fighting colds, so I decided to do the morning cat feeding.

Which turned out to already be done, except for the cat soup! I never heard my older daughter go out to do the feeding. She doesn’t do the cat soup part, though, so the cats were happy to see me. 😄

I counted 12 this morning. I did not see the calico, anywhere.

I was still feeling good so I stayed outside, uncovering the tomatoes for the day. Tonight is supposed to be quite a bit warmer than the past few nights, so they won’t need covering tonight. Then I went to check on the haskaps and water the remaining transplants in the trays.

When I got there, I decided to sort through the trays with the spruce saplings. I took out all the empty pots and dead ones, and set all the remaining living saplings together.

I refilled four trays of 18, plus there were another 8 in little pots that fit the trays and one more in a larger pot, making for a total of 81. !!!! These are what’s left from the what my SIL could fit into the back of her car, too, and there would have been room for probably 10 trays. Granted, none of them would have been full of live plants like these sorted ones, but that’s still a LOT of saplings! My brother has ideas on where to try planting these.

Any pots that still had soil in them got emptied into a couple other trays I had brought over. Almost all the little pots were pretty much disintegrating.

Then I checked on the haskap trays and found them quite windblown again. They are so tall in those little pots, all it takes is a stiff breeze to knock them out, even though they are in trays designed to hold each pot individually.

I decided to plant in the gaps among the silver buffalo berry, which has the same spacing requirements as the haskap.

They didn’t need very big holes but in this area, I was digging up mostly wood chip mulch and soil filled with grass and weed roots. So I used most of the soil from the pots to make up for it. Then I made sure they were all clearly marked and visible, using some of the posts and reflectors that came along with the drip irrigation system supplies.

It ended up being a group of two at the south end of the silver buffalo berry rows, which is in the first image above, and a group of three at the north end, which you can see in the second image. That puts us at 95 planted haskaps now.

With the extra length of the repaired hose, I was able to go around the block of large transplanted haskaps and just reach the furthest of today’s transplants. At some point, I want to set sturdy posts at the ends of each row, to make sure hoses don’t end up dragging into the stems and damaging things.

That done, the hose got dragged around to the trays and they got a good watering. Which is when my older daughter came out to check on me. She had tried messaging me when she realized I wasn’t in the house, but I was making too much noise to hear it come in. She wanted to make sure I hadn’t tripped and fallen (again) or something like that!

Once the watering was done, I headed back inside and, just as I was going into my office, my pocket started singing.

I am so not used to my cell phone actually getting calls.

It was the women’s hospital.

I have a surgery date!

In 8 days!

I got all my instructions on various things. I need to be there for 9am, which means we would need to be on the road by 7am. Or earlier, considering construction, then trying to find parking. They do have parkades near the hospital, but I’ve already been warned off of those, as they are difficult to navigate in a pick up truck.

Anyhow. I need to start fasting at midnight the night before, fluids only until 7am, then no fluids, either. Even with fluids, the options are black coffee, plain tea (no milk, cream, sugar…), water and, if I wanted to have juice, only apple juice. No other kind of juice.

I got my other instructions on where to go and how to get in. It sounds like I’ll be on the same floor that my older daughter was in after she got transferred there from the ER across the street.

I am quite thrilled to have a date, and that it’s so close.

We still have to work out the details on getting there, including considering what our options are if I end up spending the night instead of being discharged the same day, which is what they prefer to do.

So that is done.

I then spent some time on the computer, trying to figure things out at Canada Revenue. I couldn’t confirm that I still had my disability tax credit active, and was curious about it because my husband and I both got letters about our disability benefit. It turns out the letters were for something different. There is a Canada Disability Benefit, that would be on top of the Disability Tax Credit. Potentially an extra $2400 at tax time. Meanwhile, my husband still hasn’t got his DTC because his expired and we had to do the paperwork all over again. I was able to apply for the CDB over the phone, but the website said I could apply for the DTC online, which shouldn’t have been there if I was already approved for it. Right?

I had to stop part way through as I could feel pain levels coming back, so I took my T3s early and tried lying down. Which turned out to be a good decision. It was another 3 hours before I was feeling well enough to get up again, but taking the painkillers right away, instead of waiting another hour for my alarm to go off, seemed to make a difference.

Once I was up and about again, I still had time to phone the CRA and actually talked to a human being. He was able to confirm that yes, I’m set up with the DTC until 2030, so I don’t need to apply all over again.

Then I was back on the website trying to find why I didn’t get the grocery rebate that was supposed to be deposited on Monday. These sorts of things get deposited very three months. They call it a grocery rebate now, but it is just the GST rebate under another name (rather like the government says they stopped charging a carbon tax, but all they did was give it a new name, then made a big deal about how they got rid of a tax they didn’t actually get rid of). I had never qualified for the GST rebate before, nor did my husband. Apparently, he makes “too much money” on disability. ???

So I finally found it and it turns out the deposit I got three months ago was the annual amount I qualified for.

It was just over $130.

For the year.

That’s what our government thinks is supposed to help with groceries – after they artificially inflated the cost of groceries with all those hidden carbon taxes. Oh, and the tariffs they keep putting on things, then blaming the US for our high prices. Meanwhile, we’re currently at something like 1 in 20 Canadians now relying on food banks.

*sigh*

I did at least get things straightened out at Canada Revenue.

While lying down helped, I’m still dealing with pain issues, so I think that’ll be it for me today. My daughters just took care of the evening cat feeding, which I usually try to do. Ah, well.

After next week, I should be in recovery for 6 weeks, and then all of this should no longer be an issue. They’ll be sending my lady parts for testing to see what stage the cancer was at but everyone is pretty confident this got caught early and no further treatment would be expected. By then, we’ll be going into our winter “hibernation” period, and by spring I should be fully recovered and back to being able to do manual labour outside again!

If all goes well, of course.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: survivors and a little October harvest

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today turned out to be a rather nice day, that none of us really got to take advantage of.

I found myself awake at 4am and wasn’t able to get back to sleep, so I did the morning cat feeding. Which turned out to be greatly appreciated, as both my daughters were feeling quite sick with colds.

They stayed well away from my and my husband!

I did wake with a sore throat, which could also have been from sleeping with my mouth open, but I’m going to be proactive to try and avoid getting a cold. The last thing I need is for the cancer clinic to call me with a date and time for my surgery, then having to cancel it because of a cold!

The outside cats were quite happy this morning, as I made their cat soup with a couple of little cans of donated wet cat food as well as some cat milk and soaked kibble. We have so many bags of donated cat treats, I ended up scatting three (small) bags of treats all over.

I only saw 11 cats. I did not see Sprout (Sprig?) at all. Hopefully, she came by later. I did get to pet the shrine kitten, though, who no longer eats at the shrine feeding station at all anymore. There is a particular tray she prefers to eat from. The problem with that, though, is that there’s usually four other older cats insisting on eating from that tray, too, even though there are so many others around, scarfing down the food, and she doesn’t get as much. She doesn’t seem to want to eat out of any of the other trays for some reason.

After taking care of the kitties, I stayed out to enjoy the morning and do some light work in the old kitchen garden. I uncovered the self seeded Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and had a chance to give them a good look.

They are doing remarkably well.

Hidden in the thickest greenery, there are tomatoes ripening on the vine!

The frost cloth isn’t long enough to completely cover one end, so the branches there were more frost damaged. I broke off the most damage branches, and found a number of little green tomatoes that had fallen off. So I picked them, which you can see in the second image, and brought them inside to ripen. Between the frost cloth and the more sheltered position in this bed, these tomato plants are protected enough from the colder nights that they’re not being killed off. I’m quite impressed!

After that, I finally removed the cover over the beets and parsnips, and the herb bed. The herb bed was more difficult to remove, as the oregano on one side had grown through the chicken wire quite thickly. I managed to get it off without uprooting anything.

Then I started working on the summer squash, removing all the wire garden ties securing the stalks to their vertical bamboo stake supports, then the ones holding the ends of the woven horizontal supports together, before finally pulling them all up. I was able to make a couple of bundles of 10 stakes all the same length, with the garden wire to secure them. Then I did my usual morning rounds, checking on the other garden beds and the haskaps. With the high winds we had, a lot of the smaller ones in the trays were blown right out, so those got fixed, then watered. I made sure to water the spruce saplings, too. Those little pots will dry out fast.

I didn’t try to take down other covers and rods on other beds yet. The netting and clear vinyl sheets are something I will wait to have a second person help with. With the winds we’ve been having, it’s rather difficult to fold and roll them up for winter storage with just one person.

That done, I headed back in and tried to go back to sleep.

It didn’t work.

I did send a bit of a list to the girls of what I’d gotten done, and what needed to be done with them, mentioning that all the transplanted haskaps would need a deep watering.

I also found an email update on my FIL’s condition. He is, unfortunately, deteriorating and it’s looking like he is not going to be around much longer. His dementia is failing particularly fast, and he has been “sundowning” by the end of the day, talking about things like going to see his parents. They passed away decades ago. It’s been particularly hard on my husband, as he physically can’t make the trip to see his father, and now it seems he won’t even be able to talk to him on the phone. His father is unlikely to even know who he is.

It does make me appreciate just how well my mother is doing.

My SIL messaged to check on me and how I was doing, and we chatted for a fair bit before I finally gave up on lying down. I had intended to go back outside again in the afternoon, but the pain levels suddenly kicked in and I ended up having to lie down again. My daughters, sick as they were, headed outside and deep watered the haskap.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to sleep, because I kept getting notifications! I got some texts from my sister, letting me know she had visited my mother. She was updating me when the phone rang – and it was my mother! She wanted to know how things had gone yesterday. It was a mostly good call, though she did try to go on about how my brother should be doing stuff around here, not us, because he’s a man and we women shouldn’t be doing things like planting trees. Which is bizarre, since she planted many, many trees over the years! (Mostly in terrible places! 😄) She did start talking about how my brother has many important responsibilities, both at work and at home, and how he goes out of province to visit the grandsons, etc. Then, much to my shock, she switched to Polish and said a blessing on him for good health and a long life. My mother rather hates my brother and he can never do anything good enough for her, so when she does stuff like this, it makes me suspicious. She seemed to be genuine, though.

By then, a few hours had gone by and my pain levels finally eased and I did finally make it outside. I meant to just walk around and check on things but, of course, I found small things that I could do.

Including getting a small harvest.

In the East garden bed where I’d planted the Uzbek Golden Carrots, I was able to dig up these.

A couple of them were self seeded, while the others were the only ones that germinated from the older seed tape I’d made with them a couple of years ago.

While checking things out in the main garden area, I tried digging up some of the Daikon radish that all bolted. There were no radish roots at all in the ones I dug up. Just the woody material that happens when they bolt, instead.

I did, however, dig up a few Red Bearded bunching onions.

Just enough for today.

As I write this, I’ve got a pork stew going in the Instant Pot, with all these carrots and onions, plus the last of the summer squash I’d picked before the frost got them, along with our own potatoes and our own garlic. The liquid is gelled meat juices from the last of the big brisket I got a while back, cut into individual size roasts that my daughter seasoned well and slow roasted, low and slow, for something like three hours.

I am quite looking forward to it! We don’t have a lot from the garden this year, but we at least have enough for a few meals. Which is better than nothing!

I’m just really appreciating the fact that I was able to harvest anything at all, in October. Looking ahead on the 10 day forecast, we’ve got some mild weather for the next while, and even another day with an expected high of 20C/68F! Things are supposed to be cooler after that, but still relatively mild. The ground isn’t going to freeze for a while, yet. Right now, my time limit is not the weather anymore, but my surgery date. After the surgery, I’m out of commission for 6 weeks, so the more I can get done before the surgery the better, though my daughters will be taking over a lot of things as they are able.

Oh! What is that beeping I hear?

’tis the Instant Pot, finished cooking the stew and now depressurizing.

This is going to be good!

The Re-Farmer

The longest half hour, ever…

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, this was a day!

Thanks to my SIL offering to drop us off at the hospital the cancer clinic is in, we didn’t have to leave as early as originally planned, but it was still early enough to see this.

It’s a bit shaky, since I put my phone’s camera on the night setting and had to try and hold still for several seconds, since I had nothing I could use as a tripod. Still, it captured the image quite well, including the stunning deep blue of the sky before the sun rose some 15 minutes later.

Once on the road, we took the highway past our place first, which meant we had a town to drive through. We stopped for gas, because I didn’t want to go below a half tank.

$50 at $1.799/L added a quarter tank. *sigh*

The route we took allowed us to bypass all the construction, which was really important, though we did get stuck behind someone doing 90kph in a 100kph zone for quite a while. My daughter kept my SIL updated on our progress the whole way so, when we got there, she was outside and ready to go. All we had to do was park in their driveway and transfer my walker over. Something I almost forgot to bring along and, when I remembered, considered not bringing, since I was feeling so well.

I am so glad I brought it along, just in case.

From their place, the drive to the hospital was pretty straightforward. It meant going through the heart of downtown and traffic was heavy, but she got us there with about 10 minutes to spare! Thankfully, she knows the hospital well (having spent quite a bit of time going there herself for various reasons over the years) and knew which doors were the ER doors she needed to drop me off at, rather than the ones I was used to and through were the ER doors for some reason.

Once there, my daughter got my walker out and my SIL headed out to find somewhere to stay. I was told the appointment should take about half an hour, so we figured it wouldn’t be long before we could message her to pick us up.

Ha!

The woman who called me with the appointment time and instructions (and gave me a time frame) said to use the doors south of the ER doors. I was expecting a completely different set of doors, but there weren’t any. So we went into what we thought were the ER doors to look for instructions. It turned out they were the correct doors to go into, and we immediately saw direction bubbles and arrows on the floor for various places, including the cancer clinic.

Bonus!

We got to the registration desk and checked in, then sat in the waiting room. Before long, I was called in. I had my phone in my hand, so I was able to check the time, and it was exactly my appointment time!

We ended up in the room for about 3 hours.

First, the nurse that got me from the waiting room took my weight and height. When she told me my height, I told her, nope. That’s not right! I took off my shoes. It turns out my shoes added a full inch to my height. 😄

From there, I was taken to an examination room and she started to fill out forms and give me information, including a sheet with the names and photos of the team that I will be seeing. There was the specific doctor I was told I’d be seeing, but I would be able to see any member of the team during follow up visits and they’d all be fully informed about my file. My daughter was with me, which is great because she’s been with me with other visits and can sometimes remember details I forget to mention.

Once she was done, someone else from the team came in and talked with me some more. Then she left, and the nurse came back. Then the second woman came back, along with a guy. More talking ensued.

Something I found interesting was how many different people started out by asking me “do you know why you’re here?” After a while, my knee-jerk reaction was to think this was supposed to be some sort of trick question.

I got so, so many questions about my health background. What past surgeries have I had. What past health issues have I had. What tests have I had over the years. When talking about specific past tests I’ve had, I kept saying how they always came back normal, showed no problems, etc. By the end of it, I got comments about how great my overall health has been and I just had to joke about being the healthiest sick person around! Especially during times when we were trying to find the cause of something, like my chronic cough (which has pretty much gone away on its own), and everything kept testing normal.

We never did find out the reason for that cough.

I did get to explain the timeline of when all this started, and the connection to that anti-inflammatory I had been taking, and what happened when I stopped taking it.

Eventually, though, I had to have a physical examination, which was to be done by the guy, with the second woman assisting.

It was a decidedly invasive examination. Which I expected but, gosh, it really sucks.

They both left long enough for me to get into a gown, then change back into my clothes, then came back to give me the final information they are currently able to. I’m doing to get a dye that will help them map my lymph nodes to see which ones are directly being used by my uterus. If that works, they will remove only those nodes. If the mapping doesn’t show them any specific nodes, they’ll remove them all, along with my uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and cervice.

Also, it’s going to be done by a robot.

Yeah, my daughter and I started geeking out.

The surgeon will be controlling the robot arms directly, and that will be used for an internal procedure. If they find things are scarred or attached in unexpected ways, they might need to switch to an external incision to do the job.

I got all the usual warnings of risks and possible negative outcomes.

If all goes well, I’ll be going home on the same day.

At this point, the waiting list for this is quite short, and the OR schedule is not overly crowded. I might actually get in within a week, but more likely within 2 weeks. I’ll be getting a phone call with the exact date and time, and detailed instructions. They also gave me a 4 page form to fill out with more historical information – some going back so far, I couldn’t even give the level of detail the form requested. Like the exact dates for some of them, or even which hospital I’d gone to, that long ago.

Interestingly, one of the instructions I was given is, in the days before the surgery, they want me eating a high carb diet. After the surgery, they want me on a high protein diet. I’ve never had anyone give me diet instructions around a surgery before!

After going over all that and signing the consent forms, they left and the first nurse came back with more forms. She had requisition forms for pre-op lab work, EKG and chest X-rays. After I finished filling out the 4 page form, I had to give that to the receptionist, then I could do all the rest, right there, rather than figure out when to get them done in one of the surrounding towns after we got home.

The sheet for the lab work had almost everything checked off on it! I was to do the EKG next but by then it was noon, and they were closed for an hour. Which worked out because I could get the X-rays done while waiting.

We were so glad for the volunteers at this hospital that are available to take people where they need to go. Even with all the floor markings and signs everywhere, the place is a maze and some things just weren’t obvious. Like having to go to the admissions desk on one floor to get registered before going to where the EKGs are done, on another floor. Altogether, we went to three floors to get it all done.

Meanwhile, my SIL was waiting this whole time. She did find somewhere she could go and wait, but we didn’t expect things to go this long, and she ended up spending a lot of time just sitting in her car! My daughter kept her and the family updated frequently, during those times when I wasn’t able to.

While the X-rays were done very quickly, the time taken to walk around, check in, then wait until being called really added to things.

Unfortunately, after that physical exam, the pain levels started kicking on, and I was so, so glad I brought that walker!! I did have T3s with me to take, but I honestly don’t think they made a difference. It just kept getting worse until I was having difficulties sitting up straight in waiting room chairs and had to lean into my walker.

By the time the EKG was done, more than an hour after I’d taken the painkillers, the pain levels started to decrease. When we headed outside to wait for my SIL to come around and pick us up, it had dropped significantly.

My SIL, angel that she is, had said she planned to take us out for breakfast after we were done.

It was getting close to 3pm by the time she got us to a restaurant. Before we’d left, I had made sure to grab an apple and some cheese for breakfast, which was at about 6:30am. During the drive, before 7:30am, my daughter had some beef jerky that we keep in the truck. That was all we’d eaten all day. We were pretty famished by then!

That “half hour” appointment ended up being about 5 hours!

Longest half hour, ever.

From there, she drove us to her place and we just transferred the walker over and said our goodbyes right away, and she was finally able to go home!

My SIL is such a saint.

Since it was pretty much on the way from their place, we had planned on stopping at a Canadian Tire and a Walmart in the smaller city on the way home. I was feeling well enough that we could still do that.

Canadian Tire was our first stop, where I was able to return the two 1/2 inch Quick Connect repair kits my brother had picked up for me and picked up a 5/8 inch set, with the female coupling attachment, which was not included in the kits my brother had picked up. That one little piece and the larger size almost doubled the price!

That done, we crossed the street to the Walmart to pick up a few groceries and some kibble for the inside cats, since I don’t know when we’ll finally do that Costco run. Between focusing on getting those haskaps transplanted and my pain levels, it just keeps getting delayed. Of course, now I will be waiting on a phone call for a surgery date, too. This time, though, they do have permission to talk to my husband about anything, so even if I’m not home, they can give the information to him. In theory, they could call my cell phone but there’s no way I’d be able to make notes while I’m out and about.

For me, I had my pain levels increase, then decrease, over the hours of those 5 hours. My daughter, however, is fighting a cold and had her own pain issues to deal with. By the time we were done and heading home, she was having trouble walking, even with her cane, and had pretty much lost her voice entirely!

Once home and everything was unloaded and put away, I did go outside for a while. After all that time sitting on waiting room chairs or lying on examination tables, I really, really wanted to get outside in the fresh air and just walk around.

I ended up watering the remaining trees in the trays. We had high winds again and a lot of them had been blown right out!

Then I remembered the Quick connect repair kit. With that kit, it took about 10 seconds to repair the broken hose. Then I got the metal hose out from all the hoses we’ve got for watering the trees and put the repairs hose back on. The repaired hose is about 30 feet longer than the metal one, which is useful to reach the transplants. Especially once we are able to set some of the little ones into the blank spots where silver buffalo berry didn’t make it, as those are even further from the house. It might still not be enough, since I will not try to run the hose through the rows of transplanted haskap, but there is still the old rain barrel and a watering can out there that can be used, if necessary.

Then, because I just couldn’t help myself, I also sorted the support stakes that we used to mark the spaces and started some bundles of 10, getting ready to put them away for the winter.

All of this was very light stuff, with no risk of overdoing it and causing pain levels to increase.

I’m going to be going stir crazy after the surgery, though. I will be on 6 weeks of recovery restrictions. No lifting. No manual labour. Not even light manual labour. I won’t be able to do much more than simply walk around, and even that will be limited.

I’m already chafing at my limitations now.

Still, it’ll only be for 6 weeks.

Which should be until around the end of November. I won’t be able to do any of the fall clean up and winterizing outside.

*sigh*

Ah, well.

The girls will do as much as they are able to, while working around their own pain levels, and some things will just have to wait for spring.

Just not the garlic. Those have to go in this month. In fact, looking at the overnight temperatures for the next while, they should probably be planted within the next week to 10 days, and we don’t even have a bed prepared for them yet!

Little by little, it’ll get done. We just do what we can!

The Re-Farmer