I woke this morning to find a message from my early riser brother, asking me if I could meet him at my mother’s to help with the phone again.

Of course, I said yes. I don’t mind changing my plans for him!

So while my mother was in church, we went in and fiddled with her phone. While the call blocking device is set up and working, this was call blocking through the phone system, which was intended to block thousands of known scammer numbers, plus any numbers manually entered.

Last time, while going through the process to activate it at my mother’s phone, then adding numbers, we kept getting a busy signal, instead. After many calls and an urgent call to tell them – again! – to NOT call my mother (they did, anyhow, which really got her going) nor send over a tech (they had someone booked!), because our mother would not understand any of this, my brother finally got through to someone who knew what they are talking about.

After the new guy went over the file, my brother got many apologies. It should NOT have been so much trouble.

In the end, it turned out the blocking service was something that needed to be turned on at the junction in my mother’s town. However, the system is so antiquated that they weren’t sure it could even BE turned on.

Well, it turns out it could, so now my brother needed to activate it at my mother’s phone.

Which he did, then tested it by blocking his work cell phone number, then trying to use that phone to call our mother.

It worked, but when he went to add our vandal’s numbers, he got a message saying the service was turned off.

So he went through the process again, turning it back on and adding in two other numbers our vandal is known to use.

They couldn’t be blocked.

They are cell phone numbers from a different company. Only the land line, which is with the same company as my mother’s, could be blocked.

In the end, my brother erased the one number that worked and shut the system off. He was willing to pay a monthly fee for this service, but there’s no point if it can’t block numbers from other service providers. He’s going to simply cancel the service.

We are very glad the physical device is set up, so there is at least that! Our vandal still can’t call our mother and leave abusive messages anymore.

That done, we went through a few other things and did minor repairs. Then we started talking about the peep hole in my mother’s door.

Since things are being left at our mother’s door, and we have no confirmation on who it is, even though it can only be one person, my brother has been looking up peep hole cameras, with motion sensors triggering them to take images. It would have to be completely stand-alone, since our mother has zero ability to understand technology.

That led us to looking at and measuring the peep hole on her door.

Which was covered with packing tape she used to stick a plastic picture on the door.

I think it’s a place mat with a scenic image on it, but I’m not sure.

It got moved, but not until after my brother tried looking through it, and found he couldn’t see anything.

After it was moved, he still couldn’t see much.

Oh, you could see light, and the contrast between the wall across the hall and the hall carpet, but my brother remembers being able to see more of the hallway. I even stepped outside so he could look at me through the peep hole, and he couldn’t see me!

Looking at the outside of the peep hole, we discovered it had something on it.

After trying to scrape it clean, we’re pretty sure it’s Krazy Glue.

How long it’s been like this, we have no idea. My mother doesn’t use the peep hole (I think it’s low enough for her to look through). My brother thinks it’s been at least a year since he’s looked through it. I can’t remember if I ever fid, but if I did, it would have been shortly after we moved to the farm.

So… yeah. At some unknown point, it seems that someone put glue on the outside of the peep hole, rendering it useless.

Of course, we can think of only one person who would do that, and that would be the same person who glued the locks on our gate a few times.

Just suspicion, on our part, of course.

So my brother is now thinking if it’s worth spending the money on the peep hole he was thinking of getting, if it’s likely to get vandalized like that.

No decision has been made.

When our mother got back from church, we had tea and lunch waiting for her. She was expecting my brother, but he didn’t know if I could come, so he didn’t say anything about whether I would be there.

We had a nice lunch, then talked about a few things that needed to be discussed, from letting her know what we fixed, to addressing letters she received but didn’t understand.

When it was time to go, my mother started giving us a hard time about leaving so soon, even though we’d been there with her for quite a while. After parting ways, I made a quick stop at the grocery store to get more cat kibble. *sigh*

It was an awesome day to be out and about!

No surprise that -10C feels really warm right now, but check this long range forecast out!

They’re actually expecting us to go above freezing at the end of the month!

Of course, this will change several times before we get to the end of the month, but it’s been pretty consistently saying we should at least be just a couple of degrees below freezing.

Since I will be driving to the city around that time, I’m quite happy to see this.

I’m also going to be very happy to pick 6 my computer, too! I’m quite looking forward to making these posts on my ergonomic keyboard again, instead of tapping on my phone!!

The Re-Farmer