First, the cuteness.

Toni is healing up nicely and doing great. When we first brought her in and she was recovering from her amputation, we kept her isolated in my room. Once it was safe to let her out, she had zero interest in coming back. Lately, though, she’s started to come back into my room and will stay there, even overnight. Sometimes she’ll cuddled with the kittens, or will get into wrestling matches with Clarence – who is starting to be bigger than she is! Mostly, she seems to just enjoy being on my bed.

While doing my morning rounds, I was surprised to see there was actually still a bit of kibble from last night. Which means, no visits from the racoons! I saw only about 23 cats when I did a head count.

I did find one other, though, just towards the end of my rounds, and it was a sad find. I was coming around the west side of the house, and could just see the tail end of a cat under the cat house. That in itself is unusual. We see them going under on that side, or peeking out, but not lying on the ground. Even before I moved around a piece of insulation we have under there, to see if it would move, I knew it wouldn’t. I can see that it’s a tabby, but that’s it. We’ll have to pull it out later and cremate it, but it’s too windy to get a burn going.

I find myself wondering if this was the result of injuries from a cat fight, just because of how and where I am seeing it. I won’t be able to see if there are any obvious injuries until we get it out.

I didn’t have much time to think about it, either. We had a tow truck booked to get the truck. I’d called CAA last night to make the arrangements, making sure to tell them the tow could be done in the morning. I was told they would release the call at 8:30. Once a tow company accepted the call, they’d let us know and give us an ETA. Once that was arranged, I messaged our mechanic to let him know what was arranged and asked him to check the fuse box along with changing the battery, just to be on the safe side.

I got an automated call just before 8am, with an estimated arrival time for the tow truck at 60 minutes.

He got here before I finished my rounds! I thought I had at least another half hour, so I hadn’t unlocked the gate, yet.

Getting the truck was a bit of an issue. He could back up to it, but only at an angle, because of trees. The truck, however, was also parked at an angle, so it worked out. What he ended up securing it just enough at the front of the truck, to get the road. Once on the road, he unhooked it, drove around to the other end, then hooked it up and secured it properly from the back.

As he was pulling in, I went to put the truck in neutral. I turned the key to light up the dash, so I could see the display, but there was nothing. No dash lights or any sound at all. That battery was stone cold dead! I still put it in neutral; I just couldn’t see to confirm.

I hadn’t had much sleep last night, so once that was gone, I was going to try and get a bit of a nap. I ended up messaging with my SIL, which reminded me to send some photos for my brother that I took this morning.

I couldn’t close the garage door last night.

The top of the frame has been slowly sagging, so when we open and close the door, it hits the frame. That’s why there are pieces of metal under it; they help the door slide across without getting caught and damaging the wood. Over time, we found we’d have to push the door inwards in the middle, so the handle could clear.

Now, it just bashes onto the frame. While I could probably push the door inwards and get it past, that’s just going to make things get worse, faster. You can just see in the picture, to the left of one of those pieces of metal on the frame, that there is a crack in the wood. That crack is getting bigger.

I think it can actually be fixed, still. We’d need to jack the frame up until it’s level again, then secure and support it from the inside. We might not even have to remove the door. Once the frame has been raised back to where it’s supposed to be, the door can be closed, and we’ll be able to access the inside of the wall and roof above. The problem is, we have absolutely nothing to do this with. My brother has the tools needed, and would know how or where to get the things he doesn’t have.

Anyhow; he now knows about it, and might be able to come out some time before Christmas to fix it.

That was my conversation with my SIL when I should have been trying to sleep. 😄 Of course, there were various interruptions during my attempt to get some sleep. Mostly involving a Snorri, using me as a bed! At one point, I decided to check my texts, just in case. Sure enough, there was a message from the garage, saying the truck was ready! It had come in half an hour before I saw it. For some reason, my phone doesn’t give me text notifications. 🤔 He sure got that done fast!

So my daughter and I headed out to get the truck. My daughter just dropped me off and headed home. Since I was in town anyhow, I did an errand and got some gas (the prices have gone down to 149.9¢/L) before heading home. I’m glad we had the cash from selling those scrap cars! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to get the new battery until next week, and the truck would have been sitting in our yard the entire time.

It cost less than I expected. Our mechanic wasn’t there at the time and I only talked to one of his staff, so I couldn’t ask details, but clearly he found no problem in the fuse box. He charged me for the battery, but not for labour! When my husband looked up batteries for our year, make and model, the retail prices start at $250, for a mid range quality battery. Even including taxes, we got a better price by getting it through our mechanic.

As much as I would have preferred to wait until next week, I’m glad we got it done, and that we were able to get it done now!

So that means tomorrow, when the dump is open again, we can FINALLY do a dump run! We’ll also be set and safe for when we do our stock up shopping next week. Yes, there are other fixes that we are discovering – it’s a well used 2011, after all! – but they are relatively minor and do not affect the safety or function of the vehicle. Everything identified during the safety inspection got done before we bought it.

Meanwhile, we are supposed to warm up again, even reaching a high of 0C/32F tomorrow. We’ll have one day with a high of -8C/18F, and then warm up again. In fact, in the first week of December, we are supposed to reach highs above freezing. How many days above freezing changes with the app I look at, but they all say we should be getting at least a couple of days above 0C/32F in early December.

This may turn out to be the nicest winter we’ve had since moving out here!

The Re-Farmer