We’re still under an extreme cold weather advisory right now. Today is supposed to be the coldest day of our current cold snap, and then things are supposed to start warming up again.
I’m pretty sure I’ve said that a few times this winter, though… 😕
I took this screen cap a little while ago, with us at -27C/-17F and a wind chill of -35C/-31F, and it’s already warmed up a degree since. What I find interesting is that the hourly forecast says we’re supposed to be -31C/-24F right now. Now, that’s the kind if “wrong forecast” I prefer. Unfortunately, I forgot to pick something up while I was in town yesterday, so I likely will have to go out today.
Of course, if we get a call saying we can pick up our new Caravan because the financing is approved, that would be bonus!
We shall see!
Today is also Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. For the past few years, I have chosen to “fast” by giving up social media. Which has gotten to be too easy. So I decided to give up something that I’ve been considering for a while, but is going to be hard, and it’s actually going to be a dietary fast this time.
I’m going to be giving up sugar and starchy foods.
Traditionally, meat is given up but, again, that’s too easy. To be honest, giving up sugar isn’t that hard, either; we don’t eat a lot of sweets, so it’s basically no more sugar in my tea, and no more home-made hot chocolate. But starches? Bread, potatoes, pasta… that’s going to be more of a challenge. I’ve been slowly already cutting back on them, and what struck me is how much these get used as “filler”. These are things that bulk up a meal, extend meat, or hold other foods. I have an egg salad sandwich instead of plain egg salad, because the bread allows me to eat the egg salad with my hands. I mix bread crumbs into ground beef to make a meat loaf mostly because it bulks things up, stretching the amount of meat used. Things like that. It’s also such a habit to include starches. It’s just been ingrained that a “proper” meal has a protein, vegetable and starch, and what meal is complete without bread of some kind? I think the habit part is going to be the most difficult to catch myself on.
So that is going to be my Lenten fast this year. No sugars or starches for 40 days.
Well… I haven’t had breakfast yet. Time to go make myself a food.
Y’know, if the weather forecasts are going to be wrong and constantly changing, it’d be really nice if things would go in the other direction.
Instead, we’re getting this for tonight.
Wind chills of -40 to -45C (-40 to 49F) to overnight???
Granted, this is a province wide warning that applies only to the south, and we’re central. Looking at the local forecasts, I’m seeing predictions of a continual drop until it reaches -29C/-20F by 8am tomorrow morning, with wind chills of -39C/-38F.
It’s not much better than the weather warning, but I’ll take what I can get!
I’m glad my daughter reminded me to plug the van in. I just wish we were able to get that ceramic terrarium heat bulb set up in the sun room, but the fixture we were using with the old bulb isn’t working anymore. We don’t have any other fixture we can safely set up in there.
The high of the day is supposed to be -26C/-15F starting around 2pm. From then on, even the overnight lows are expected to be a bit warmer than that. By Sunday, we’re supposed to reach -4C/25F, and Monday, when I’m supposed to be driving my mother to her medical appointment, it’s supposed to be -7C/19F.
Well, the cold snap we were predicted to get has been dipping to temperatures colder than predicted! This morning, when I did my morning rounds, we were at about -28C/-18F, with a wind chill of -32C/-26F We were mostly sheltered from the wind, though, and it was bright and sunny, so at least in our little microclimate, it felt a bit warmer. Still, the yard cats were thoroughly mashed together on the swing bench in the sun room for the night, keeping each other warm!
This picture was not from this morning, though. This is from when I got back from town this afternoon.
This is the little one the girls have named Colin (Mochrie), because of his “hairline”. There’s another little white and grey one that is not friendly, but loves to jump up on the shelf under the bathroom window and peek in. My daughter says he looks just like Tissue, but haunted, so they’ve named him Dryer Sheet.
So… among the calicos we had Cabbages, and now have Broccoli, mother of Brussel and Sprout, and we have grey and whites with the tom, Shop Towel (aka: Sad Face), father of Tissue and now Dryer Sheet (along with 8 other white and greys, including Colin).
Coming up with names for the cats has been a lot of fun! 😁
Anyhow…
Before I headed out this morning, knowing I’d be away in the afternoon, I contacted the hospital about my mother’s appointment. We have a date, but not a time. I ended up emailing them, but they did call back fairly quickly. Once I got those details straightened out, I phoned my mother and let her know. She was not happy to hear she had to be there for 9:15 in the morning, and was wondering why it was so early. *sigh* When we spoke yesterday evening about it, she was going on about how it’s winter, and it’s so cold and it’s so far away… We’re actually supposed to be back up to just below freezing by then, and it’s not that far away at all. She’s just gotten used to not getting up until 10am, and is really not looking forward to the procedure!
But, that’s all been worked out.
Then I got a message from the garage, about our financing application. The financing company wanted proof of income, including my husband’s most recent pay stubs, and confirmation of disability income from both Sun Life and CPP Disability.
My husband hasn’t have pay stubs in almost 10 years. He did get his annual letter from Sun Life, confirming his payments for the year, last month, so I was able to take a photo of that and email it in. As for the CPP Disability payments, we have no letter for that, so I sent in a copy of our automatic payments and deposits from our bank. If that wasn’t enough, I’m not sure what else I could have sent them. He did get his T4A from CPP Disability (still waiting for the one from Sun Life before we can do our taxes), so maybe I could have sent them that.
I got to the garage quite early, so I dropped off the key, talked to them for a bit, letting them know about the problem with the van not wanting to start, and that I’d sent in the required information for the financing application. Then I was going to go to the restaurant next door for lunch. It turned out they had been open during the holiday yesterday, so they were closed today – normally, they’re open 7 days a week. The next closest restaurant was quite a few blocks away (one thing about this being a tourist town: there are lots of restaurants, but they’re almost all closer to the beach). It was a nippy walk, that’s for sure!
I was back at the garage about an hour later, and the van was almost done. The owner was constantly on the phone, or answering text messages, or looking up parts, etc. the entire time I was waiting! After his mechanic finished with the van, he did a final scan using their shop tablet (that thing is so solid, they could probably throw it across the room, and it won’t break!), but that got delayed because they had to update the software! Of course, when the scan finally got done, there were a whole lot of codes that came up, which he cleared. The main thing is that, with the new sensor for the temperature gauge in, that’s one code that was fixed! At least I’ll know if the engine suddenly starts overheating or something.
As he was getting my invoice ready, we talked about the financing again. I really hope it comes through. As I told him, as much as I don’t like the idea of having car payments again, I much prefer that and having a vehicle that I at least know will start! It turns out one of the calls he had earlier was from the financing company. Since I was there, he’d told them that if they needed anything else, he could ask me right away. He was told everything looked good, and the application has been sent to a bank.
Now, we just wait.
At this point, either we get approved, and I’ll just need to send them a voided check, which I can do by taking a photo of one and emailing it in, or we get turned down and that’s it.
We are SO close. My biggest concern is that we do get approved, but the monthly payments are higher than we can afford. Yes, my older daughter has said she will help with the payments, but I’m calculating as if that’s not going to happen, just to be on the safe side. Her income is all commissions based, after all, so how much she makes a month is variable.
In all honestly, right now, I just want to get an answer, one way or the other. It’s this hanging in the air, waiting, that is most frustrating. Especially after what happened last time, with the other financing company. In the end, though, not getting that vehicle doesn’t bother me much. The Caravan is much more suited to our needs.
We’re one step closer. It would be awesome if we got an answer tomorrow!!
This morning I got a picture of some of our seedlings, after refilling trays to water them from below.
There are still only two little pepper seedlings. The thyme and lemongrass don’t seem to be growing much. I think this might be part of why they need to be started so early!
The two drum gourd seedlings in one pot are still the only ones to have germinated. With using these biodegradable pots, it’s been interesting to see how the pot the germinated seeds are in dries out so much faster than the other ones. Even the square cells the herbs are in show noticeable drying out in the ones with the most seedlings. For this reason, I still mist them as well as water from below.
Last year, I remember my first zucca melon seeds never germinated, and I had to try again. I’m hoping I won’t need to do that again this year. The zucca and the drums need as much growing time as we can give them.
We’re going to have to start other seeds soon. That means rotating things out of the aquarium greenhouses and, for that, we still need to make a trip to the city to pick up the materials we need to build barriers and keep the cats out of the living room. When picking up eggs yesterday, I noticed they had lumber in their truck and asked about prices. Lumber prices have gone down a LOT in the last while, which is encouraging. The prices are still high, but not astronomical anymore.
The trip to the city will have to wait until after the van’s date at the garage to get the temperature gauge sensor replaced.
Still holding out hope that we’ll qualify for financing on the Caravan, but if I’m going to be honest with myself, the odds are not in our favour. Mind you, our situation wasn’t much better when we got financing for the Grand Caravan we got, years ago. Oddly enough, my husband being on disability gives us a more reliable income now than when he was still working. Nothing like moving to a new city for a 2 year contract, only to have the contract end after 6 months, instead!
Ah, well. Whatever happens, happens. We just need to deal with what’s in front of us.
Which, at the moment, means turning the living room into a cat proof plant room. 😁
This winter, for the first time since I lived here as a child, we started hearing a very distinctive noise in the ceiling of the “new” part of the house. The skittering of tiny mouse feet on the tiles, running from one end of the addition to the other.
The cats were most definitely interested in that noise!
The only access to the space above the addition is upstairs and blocked by furniture, and the space is full of insulation anyhow, so there was no expectation that they’d be able to get at the mouse.
Well, it’s no longer a problem.
My older daughter regaled me, in a most entertaining way, of how she came to the kitchen this morning and noticed Fenrir behaving oddly. She was growling at the other cats (which is not odd, really) and moving around in an unusual manner.
She was also carrying something in her mouth, and she clearly didn’t want the other cats to have it!
Of course, my daughter checked it out, and discovered she was carrying a dead mouse.
After confirming it was, indeed, dead, she got it away and garbaged it. The last thing she wanted was for someone to end up stepping on a half eaten mouse.
With so many cats, inside and out, this is the first mouse we’ve seen/heard indoors in the 5 years we’ve been here.
This morning, while standing and talking to my husband, I suddenly saw a deer walking past his window! So I quietly went into the sun room, and was able to get some photos of our thieving piebald deer!
Also, that’s Sad Face on top of the cat house, having breakfast. 😁
As for the deer, she was actually able to get her head under the water bowl shelter, to reach one of the three kibble trays under there.
Yup. She was eating cat kibble!
I have been seeing hoof prints in the snow around this group of shelters, but this is the first time we’ve seen the deer in there, this winter.
I got a few more shots, including some when she was slightly spooked and had moved away, so I could see that her tail is still matted with… something. The phone camera just can’t pick up enough detail, but I’m going to go with it being lots and lots of burrs.
Today, I was due to visit with my mother, run some errands for her, then pick up a couple more flats of farm fresh eggs from our homesteading friend we were able to get so much cardboard from last year. I got to my mother’s town a bit too early for the first errand I was going to do for her at the pharmacy. It’s a holiday weekend here in Canada (in most provinces, Monday is Family Day, but also Islander Day, Heritage Day and Louis Riel Day), so some places weren’t open at all, and the pharmacy didn’t open until noon. So I did a couple of my own errands first, got the pharmacy run done, then picked up Chinese food for lunch. By the time I was at my mother’s place, she wasn’t home from church yet. I have a key to her place, though, so I was able sneak a couple of 2 pound bags of ground beef from our quarte beef order into her freezer, get the kettle going, set up lunch and heard her at the door just in time to pour the tea! She was pleasantly surprised. Which was nice because, some days, surprises make her very angry. The Chinese food place is really generous in their quantities, so by the time we were done eating, there was enough left over for her to have at least two more meals!
While we were talking, she let me know that the smoke/heat detector on her ceiling had finally been fixed. It had been beeping for a month or more, and she didn’t want to call anyone about it, because they have to call the city. She feels she should just tell people in the building about it, and it’ll magically get taken care of. She has the number to call for maintenance issues, and then there is a process they have to follow to get someone out to take care of it but, for some reason, that makes her very angry. Still, she must have finally called, because someone came out and replaced the detector completely.
Then, she told me, he “fixed” the other thing that was beeping.
That would be the CO monitor my brother set up for her, years ago.
!!!!
She’s never mentioned to us that it was beeping, too!
The guy took the batteries out (they would have been the original batteries) and told her she didn’t need it, because the detector in her ceiling does the same thing.
Well, maybe the new one that got installed does, I don’t know, but he should not have handled something that didn’t belong to the building (though I can understand why he did), and he should not have told her she didn’t need it.
I tried to explain to her what it was, because now she was thinking that what’s in her ceiling isn’t a smoke/heat detector, but she doesn’t understand what a CO monitor is, either. Or maybe she thought the CO monitor was a smoke detector. I didn’t quite get the straight of it. I tried to explain to her what CO poisoning is, and that if she ever hears that thing go off, she needed to get out right away. I also said that, even if this new detector was a CO monitor, it’s good to have a back up. If one goes off, but the other doesn’t, then maybe it’s a dead battery, but if they both go off, it’s really important for her to get out of her apartment right away. Well, that got her angry, and she started going on about how no one had these for so many years and it was never a problem. I told her that people died from CO poisoning, and that’s why these monitors are now being made.
She didn’t believe me.
She also had a clock that needed a new battery, but she had only one AA battery, so I changed the battery on her clock and offered to buy her more batteries when I went to the grocery store for her. She told me not to. She didn’t need them, and she didn’t want new batteries for the CO monitor, because the guy told her she didn’t need it. She was even angry that my brother had bought it in the first place, and told me she’d paid him X amount for it – which means she now thinks that my brother somehow cheated her by buying this and expecting her to pay for it (which I know full well is not how things would have happened).
I’m sure the guy meant well when he “helped” her, but this is an example of why there’s usually a restriction on contractors/maintenance staff when it comes to doing anything beyond what they are there to do.
After it became clear she was going to completely reject anything I told her, I said I would talk to my brother and maybe she’ll believe him if she won’t believe me. Then I went to the grocery store and, before going inside, sent him a message about it. He ended up phoning me while I was still in the grocery store, so I called him back once I was back in the car (also: my phone rings so rarely, when I heard it, I thought it was someone else’s phone near me! 😄) and explained it some more. He was equally frustrated, and said he would call Mom. I started heading back then decided to turn around and buy the batteries for her, anyhow.
By the time I got to her place, she had started to watch TV and didn’t say a thing about the call from my brother, until I pulled out the batteries and started putting them in. She was clearly unhappy that I had told him about it. Unfortunately, once the batteries were in, the monitor gave a loud, piercing noise, which was just to show that it was now working. My mother got angry again, saying that she didn’t need it and I shouldn’t put batteries in. The noise stopped, though, so I just put it back down on her shelf and left it.
The rest of the visit was more peaceful, and she was actually on much better behaviour than usual. I was just waiting to hear from my friend about the eggs, which was going to be a while. I even suggested my mother go ahead and take a nap, as I know she usually does in the afternoons, but we ended up talking some more. My friend was in the city for longer than she expected. By the time I got a message that they were on their way home, I think my mother was so tired, she was ready to kick me out! 😄 I had ordered extra eggs as a surprise for her, and had been telling my mother about the different coloured eggs, so before I left, I said I might swing by on the way home to show her the colourful eggs. When I did swing by with the eggs, I brought in the dozen I got for her and said they were for her. She started to tell me no, she didn’t need them, she has lots, but I said that these are farm fresh eggs and I’m sure she’ll love them.
So she took them without any other fight, which tells me that she was very happy with the surprise, even if she wouldn’t say so! 😄
Before I left, she told me she had something she wanted to ask me about, and headed for her bedroom. I took advantage of the moment and quickly grabbed the CO monitor and put it back on the wall where it belonged. I was afraid she might throw it away if I didn’t, and if she didn’t see me put it up, chances are she’d forget about it completely, whereas if she saw me put it up, she was more likely to take it off and throw it away.
Here’s hoping my reasoning is correct!
She then began opening up a suitcase she’d taken down from the top of her closet. There was stuff in it that she said she’d put there to protect it from when her apartment was being sprayed for bed bugs (her building is now officially declared bed bug free). She pulled a few things out, then showed me some fabric with what looked like pre-printed cushion designs, and asked me if she’d given me fabric like it (I think she meant fabric for the backs of the cushions?). I told her no – but it did give me the opportunity to ask me about a strange bundle of lacy ovals of fabric she did give me. She vaguely told me it was given to her from my nephew’s wedding. I think she was telling me they were place mats, though they don’t look like any place mats I’ve ever seen! I also couldn’t get the straight of why she gave them to me. Ah, well.
Once I told her she had not given me any other fabric, she seemed strangely satisfied, then declared that now she knows…
It was stolen by the beg bug exterminator.
She’s also convinced he stole a jar of coins.
This is something she’s done before. She was once so convinced someone had gone into her apartment while she was in the lobby and stole some cash, she was talking to everyone in the building about it – loud enough for the person she suspected to hear – and even taped a note to her door about how it was a sin to steal XXX amount of money.
Then she found the cash hidden in a different spot. After weeks of not-so-subtly accusing this person of stealing it.
She is now convinced that the exterminator went into a suitcase at the top of her closet, carefully moved some stuff off the top, stole some fabric, and put everything else back again.
Plus a jar of change, but on another occasion.
The sad thing is that this accusation merely reflects something she would do; go into other people’s stuff. It’s like when she’s been here, goes to the washroom, and we can hear her rifling through the cupboards. We can’t let her go into any rooms unsupervised, because she’ll start digging into closets and dresser drawers. In the past, she’s actually hidden things and thrown away things of ours, because she didn’t approve of them. Of course, she feels perfectly entitled to do this, because we’re family, but it also means she assumes everyone does the same thing.
*sigh*
After that, she got me to put the suitcase back in her closet, because she can get it down on her own, but can’t get it back up!
There was other weird stuff to deal with during the visit, too. Needless to say, by the time I finally was heading home, I was feeling incredibly drained.
And this was a good visit!
She’s got her medical appointment in a week. I’m going to be driving her in, driving her home, then staying with her for the required 24 hours to monitor her after the scope procedure.
Today had been the longest time I’ve spent with my mother in years. It’s going to be a real challenge to be spending the night with her! Especially since Lent is starting in a few days. I’ve decided to give up sugar – including simple carbs – for Lent this year. I’m going to have to make sure to bring my own food, and be prepared for many lectures about it.
*sigh*
Ah, well. It’ll be what it will be. I’ve been through worse.
In my last post about our seedlings, I mentioned that I thought maybe where the peppers were in the tray was a bit too cold. So I squeezed things over a bit and pulled the tray and heat mat a couple of inches away from the end of the aquarium greenhouse wall. I checked them a few hours later, and would you believe, I found peppers sprouting already! Maybe they would have sprouted anyhow, but it sure was nice to see!
As of this morning, they were noticeably bigger.
When I shut off the lights for the night, the one that is upright in the photo was like the bent one in the foreground. There’s just the two seedlings, but that’s better than none!
I’ve just come back from a long day, which I’ll write about in a separate post, but I checked them again when I got back. Not only are the peppers a bit bigger (though there’s still just two of them), there is now a second drum gourd seedling starting to show through the soil! It’s in the same pot as the first one, with no sign of seedling in any of the other drum gourd or zucca melon pots, so I hope to see more seedlings soon.
I’m just happy to finally be seeing some peppers showing up!
After yesterday’s gorgeous temperatures, doing my rounds this morning was feeling downright brutal. As I write this, we’re still at -22C/-8C, with a wind chill of -31C/-24F. I was more than happy to be back inside and checking the trail cam files.
Where I found this.
What on earth?
I tried zooming in on the full size image, but it’s just too grainy to tell. Normally, I’d say burrs, but find it strange that burrs would be all caught up just on her tail like that. I’d expect them to be more spread out. I suppose another possibility is her fecal matter somehow getting stuck, but that doesn’t seem right, either. They lift their tails well clear for that to be a possibility. Plus, some of the pieces look the wrong shape and size for that.
What a beautiful day today! Bright and sunny, with only a light wind, with an expected high of -4C/25F. A perfect day to finally get outside and do a burn! We’ve needed to do it for a while, as the cat litter sawdust was filling the burn ring to the top, but it’s just been either too chilly, too windy, or both.
I had company while I was getting set up to start.
Rolando Moon was enjoying the sun on a nice, snow free spot!
When we do a burn, along with the burnable household garbage, I have been slowly burning the old rotten pallets from the junk pile. This leaves a good body of coals that allows me to cover the burn ring, leaving the coals and litter sawdust to slowly smolder away for several days.
A lot of the old pallet pieces are so rotten, I can break them up with my hands, but there are still some longer pieces to fuss with. It takes a while to burn them through in the middle enough to break them pus the ends into the ring, so I made sure to bring a camp chair to use in between tending the fire.
Any time I sat down, Gooby came over and was all over me! He’s always had a thing for noses, but lately, he’s not just trying to lick my nose, but trying to bite it!
Then Pointy Baby came over. He’s still full of burrs. I tried to at least break them up, so he could groom some of them out himself, but he just would not stop spinning around. I think they were hurting him. After awhile, though, I think he figured out that what I was trying to do actually make him feel better. He still spun around a lot, and would lick/bite at my fingers, but he did stay mostly still enough that I got some progress. Some of the biggest bunches have been broken apart, and I even got a few out completely. There are some small, hard ones, completely encases in fur, that I haven’t been able to do much about. Still, he’s a much happier boy now!
When the fire was burned down enough to cover the ring, I was going to grab the camp chair and found this!
These two know a good thing then they see it! I didn’t have the heart to kick them off into the snow, so I picked the chair up by the arms and carried them. Pointy Baby did eventually jump off, but Gooby got a ride all the way to the sun room. So I just set the chair up where the frame to the mini greenhouse used to be, and the last I saw, he was still enjoying his comfy spot!
Tomorrow, we’re supposed to start getting a cold spell again. Nothing another bitter polar vortex like last time. As long as it’s not windy, it should still be fine.
Just out of curiosity, I just the app that has historical weather data. The 30 year average high for today is -8C/18F, and the average low is -19C/-2F. The 30 year record high for today is 7C/45F, set in 2017, while the record low was -30C/-22F, set in 2015!
I spotted a hint of green while spritzing the pots in the aquarium greenhouse last night, so I was quite eager to check this morning.
This, my friends, is our very first African Drum gourd seedling!
I’m rather surprised that this sprouted first. The peppers we’ve got planted have yet to germinate, but here we’ve got one of the massive gourds breaking ground!
You can see the big, remarkably fuzzy, seeds on the far right of the above photo.
I’m quite excited by this! It’s going to be a challenge to get these to grow to full maturity, so the gourds can then be set aside to cure and dry for at least a year. The zucca melon are also supposed to get huge, but they are for eating, not crafting.
The inside of the tank is lined with insulation, and the tray is on a heat mat, but I do wonder if it’s still too cold for the peppers. They’re at the end of the tray right in the corner. I’ve considered rotating the tray, but if it’s too cold for peppers, then it would be too cold for the drum gourds and zucca melons. We have time to try again with peppers, if it comes down to that, but not the drum gourds or zucca melons. Maybe I can find a way to rearrange the onions and luffa seedlings, so I can shift the tray on the heat mat closer to the middle.
The Re-Farmer 