With things going a bit crazy for the past few days, then being able to spend the day with a friend, I’ve been a bit behind on my usual computer stuff.

The kitties were very happy to see me this morning. I spotted a dozen of them this morning. Their trays in the kibble house had been knocked about; my husband tells me that, from the sound and smell at about 4 am (he had a sleepless night, unfortunately), there was a run-in with a skunk. Even the sun room had been ransacked a bit, again. It will be good when we can close those doors up again, which we should be able to start doing soon, now that it’s supposed to get warmer.

Going through over 300 files from just the one trail cam, then making a video using all those deer images, took a lot longer than it should have. Partly because I don’t have very good video editing software. The “easy” software that came with my computer suddenly needs a driver update and wouldn’t let me export all the work I did. I didn’t have the time nor inclination to search out and download the driver, so I used some old movie making software I have. It allows me to do a lot more, but the “new” version of the software I got was so much less intuitive, and useful than the first version I bought, not to mention a massive resource hog, I never updated it again and hardly ever use it. I’m told there are others that are better, but I just haven’t been up to searching for something that meets my needs.

Still, it was enough to get the video made. Setting it to export into an uploadable file gave me enough time to make supper.

This evening, I finally sat down to go through the email notifications for the blogs I follow, and even find a few direct emails and notifications, including donation notifications to the fundraiser for the Cat Lady (thank you!).

It took several hours to catch up. Granted, I did leave the computer a few times to do other things, but I did finally get it done. I even managed to get it done before 11pm! 😉

As I write this, it’s now just past 11pm, and we have continued to warm up to -2C/28F. Considerably warmer than this morning! Or even this afternoon.

We’re supposed to drop down a degree overnight, but tomorrow we’re supposed to reach a high of 1C/34F We’re also supposed to get a bit of snow, but that forecast changed from an expected 5-10cm/2-4 inches, to 1-3cm/<1/2 – 1 inch, in total, through tonight and into tomorrow.

If all goes well, we should be able to make our big, monthly shopping trip to the city tomorrow, and stock up again.

Thankfully, my brother made the 1 1/2 hour trip on Sunday to visit our mother, early enough to go to church with her. He was able to help her do her grocery shopping and other errands. Normally, I would have, but with the septic issues we were having, I lost complete track of how long it had been since I last helped her with her groceries. Usually, I would have phoned to ask when she needed me to come over, but that was when we found the mess in the basement and started having to get the snow cleared and the septic guy in. I called her today and mentioned it, as why I hadn’t called about her shopping earlier. She told me she had thought we would do the errands on the day I took her to visit her sister in the nursing home, now that they are allowing visits without appointments again.

Which was a bit of a surprise to me, since when we last talked about it, she had said it could wait until the weather improved again, and we would talk about it later. There was no other timeline discussed.

She was also remarkably incurious about the septic issues we had. Also a bit odd, since such conversations usually involve her going over everything I did wrong and telling me how I should have done it, or telling me I should have gotten my brother to take care of it, and how sad it is that I “don’t have a man in the house” to take care of such things for me. I guess my husband being disabled means he stopped being a man. So I suppose it was a good thing that she didn’t care that we had to deal with septic backing into our basement for the third time in four years! Still, it was very unusual for her.

She did, however, find the time to chastise me for growing potatoes in bags last year, because that was something to maybe do in the city, but it was just stupid to do that out on the farm.

I don’t think she knows that I know about the very, very stupid thing we found out she did that hurt my brother so badly. But then, she still doesn’t realize that what she did was in any way wrong. My poor brother is still trying to fix the damage. It keeps him up at night from the stress. He’s told her that, and she’s completely oblivious.

My brother is such a saint.

I know I’ve said it before, but I am so incredibly glad he owns the property now. I’m also glad that our living here does relieve him of some of the stress and worry about keeping the place from from falling apart – and our vandal from stripping it bare even more that he already had. It’s very much a “win-win” arrangement we have with him, and he is a much better “landlord” than my mother was!

We have much to be thankful for, when it comes to living out here. Even if we do have to deal with unfortunate things coming up the drain in the basement, every now and then!

The Re-Farmer