First, the happy.

Would you look at these little grublings?

Decimus has been more comfortable leaving the babies to sleep and spend her time away from them, but the kittens are now also getting more active! While Decimus and the other cats were meowing for their evening wet cat food feeding – she has already caught on to the routine! – the bitties started squirming around and making their way out of the cat cave!

We’re still working on a spring cleaning in the house, with the tax assessor coming in next week as our motivation (I’m sure the assessor has seen far worse!). One of the things I seriously need to get done is vacuum my carpet. It gets so bad, so quickly, but with Decimus and the babies in the room, I’m not about to start the vacuum and scare the bejeebers out of them. We’ll be putting them in the cat carrier and keeping them in the living room, which is still the plant room and barricaded from cats, unless under supervision, so it will be a safe place for them. Today, however, we’ve been washing all the blankets, towels and mats set out for the cats to use, including from inside the carrier. So my floor is a job that will wait until tomorrow!

I did have an unexpected and sad surprise, though. While gathering the garbage and recycling together for a dump run, I passed through the sun room and found a white and grey kitten on the floor. A dead kitten. It was bigger than Decimus’ babies, but I don’t think it was old enough for its eyes to be open yet. Oddly, its lower jaw was missing. It’s as if a cat brought it into the sun room for us to do something about it. Of course, I looked around for other kittens, but there was nothing. No clue as to who the mother was, either.

So I quickly buried it with Keith under the white lilacs. We still have the boards and the concrete pedestal over the grave, but I just moved the pedestal aside, and moved one of the boards – though I had to pull up a lot of greenery just to access it – then put it all back after burying the little one.

That done, I got the rest of the garbage and recycling together, loaded it up on my mother’s car, and headed to the dump. My husband had asked me to pick something up for him at the grocery store, so when I got home, I grabbed the newly emptied 18.9L water jug to refill and headed out again. Before I did, he quietly told me he’d changed his mind. Instead of picking something up for him, he asked me to pick something up for our younger daughter as a surprise treat. She has been doing the bulk of the cleaning while I’ve been mostly doing the running around. Her sister is still working at night (when her computer and drawing tablet are less likely to overheat and stop working), so her contributions are limited to things that won’t wake the rest of us up. My younger daughter is a great lover of cheesecake, so that was one thing I looked for. I ended up getting her a caramel chocolate cheesecake. Then, as an extra surprise, I picked up a couple of trays of sushi. Yeah, it was just grocery store sushi, but it’s still a treat!

There was a time when none of us would touch sushi (my husband still won’t). Years ago, when we were still homeschooling, I’d take the girls to a weekly park day with other homeschoolers. For years, we didn’t have a vehicle and took public transit. Between the bus and LRT connections, it took about a 1 1/2 hours to get there, and we often got to the park about 45 minutes before anyone else did. It was either that, or be almost an hour later than everyone else. Then it took another hour to get home. Same busses, same connections. It just happened to take less time, later in the day.

Yeah, transit sucked. When we did finally get a vehicle, the same trip took only 10 minutes.

In between connections, we would sometimes stop to pick up food. One day we were looking at the sushi displays, and they looked so beautiful and delicious, we decided to buy some to have for lunch before the other homeschoolers showed up. California rolls, if I remember correctly. We were quite eager and had high expectations.

We each had one piece, and that was it. I couldn’t even finish mine.

The killer was the cold rice. We just couldn’t handle eating cold rice.

So there we were, with a mostly full tray of sushi, when another transit dependant mom and her son showed up. When we found out they liked sushi, we offered it to them. They very enthusiastically accepted.

It was years before we were willing to try eating sushi again. I’m not sure what changed, but this time we liked it. Even grocery store sushi! Cold rice no longer bothered us. Very odd.

Now that we live out here, the only sushi places are in the city, and we have yet to have the opportunity to try one. So grocery store sushi remains our only option! I know grocery store sushi is treated as a bit of a joke, but we like it just fine.

Today, the grocery store happened to be freshly stocked with several larger combo trays, and I picked out two of different ones. Before leaving for home, I messaged my daughter to let her know I was on my way and would be pulling up to the house to unload. Then I told her that after unloading, we could stop for her treat! She was quite surprised and very happy with both the cheesecake and the sushi, and I made sure to tell her how much her dad and I appreciated her hard work. I know how hot, sweaty and miserable it can get, and I wanted to make sure to thank her!

I’m so glad our daughter chose to move out here with us. Taking care of this place turned out to be a much bigger job than any of us expected. We did not have any illusions that the place would be “perfect”, as my mother kept saying it was, but were still unprepared for just how neglected it had become. My brothers did their best, but there was no way they could even know about some issues, without actually living here, and my mother was in complete denial. Since my husband cannot physically do a lot, it would have been just me, and it would have been beyond what I could keep up with. My daughters gave up quite a bit to come out here with us, and I am grateful.

The Re-Farmer