I’m going to call this a mostly good, somewhat productive, somewhat frustrating day.

So this was good. Especially since one of the packages that came in early was a heart monitor my husband got for himself. The kind you strap on while exercising. Our sulfur came in, so I was happy, too.

I was driving home when I heard a Messenger notification on my phone. I pulled into the yard to unload, but remembered to check the message before I went in.

I’m glad I did.

It was from my brother, who was at work. He’d gotten a call from the public housing department about my mother, since he is her Power of Attorney. He needed to talk to me, so I let him know I just got home, then got my daughters to unload and park the truck. I barely got to my office when the phone started ringing.

My poor brother.

The first thing that came up was that they had talked to my mother and asked for his number, since he’s PoA, but she told them she didn’t remember it. They got my brother’s number from me, but this was awhile ago! This is also not the first time my mother has done this. Which is strange, because she calls him herself, and has all our numbers written down in a list on her wall, along with postal addresses, birthdays and anniversaries.

The reason they were calling him, though, was about the bed bug situation. She got their notification that they’re coming in this Friday. My mother has been refusing to let them in for the last few times. This time, she called the number on the letter and talked to the exterminator, saying she didn’t want them coming in, and once again accusing them of theft. The guy would have had to tell the department about this, which leads us to the next issue.

They are coming in on Friday, and she has to have the place prepared – stuff moved away from the walls (difficult, given how tiny her place is), fabric items bagged up, etc. They will be coming in at around 9am, and she has to be gone all day (I believe they know she has respiratory issues, which means she needs to be out for at least 12 hours, instead of the usual 6 hours).

If she doesn’t do this, she will be evicted.

*sigh*

We’ve tried to warn her about this.

My poor brother was already having a stressful time at work, and now he had to deal with this on top of it!

One thing they will also do, though, is provide her with a special mattress cover that will kill off anything on her mattress that might have gotten missed, by denying oxygen.

We talked for a bit and, once he’s home from work, he’ll send a group email to the family. My suggestion was that I could go over on Thursday night to help with bagging things and moving furniture. The best thing would be for my mother to stay at my sister’s on Thursday night, since she has Fridays off, but I forgot that my sister works nights on Thursdays. I’ll be on my own for prepping her apartment. I’d be willing to drive my mother to my sister’s, but she would have to drive my mother back, since Friday will be our first city shopping day. Worse comes to worse, my mother could stay at the motel again, but she would have to check out by noon on Friday, unless she stays for 2 nights, and she would not be willing to do that.

She has no choice, though. She either goes along with this, or gets evicted.

One thing’s for sure. Since I’m the only one that will be able to go over to help her with her stuff on Thursday, I’ll be going straight to the shower, and my clothes to the wash, as soon as I get home!

My mother has zero understanding of just how much her behavior causes problems the rest of us have to fix, and now she’s putting her own housing at risk.

My brother couldn’t talk long, though, since he was already interrupting his work day, but we’ll connect again later today.

By the time I was off the phone, the girls had taken care of things and parked the truck, so I could get stuff together to go back outside and work on the carrot bed. It still had the plastic covered frame on it, so the first thing I did was add metal brackets to the corners before moving it. I most definitely could tell these brackets make a difference!

I was not intending to make another time lapse video of the progress, since I figured it would be pretty boring. I just took still shots of the progress, but I’ve since confirmed a frustration.

To make the photos I included in my previous post smaller, I cropped one, then reduced it to 50% original size. The two garden ones weren’t cropped, but I reduced those to 30%, plus I reduced the colours. Those two ended up being smaller file sizes than the 50% and cropped one. All the photos were uploaded to Google Photos, and inserted into my post from there. On my desktop, WP just tells me my storage is at 98% full, but the app gives decimal points, so when I had the chance, I checked on my phone to see if there was any change.

My storage went from 98.3% full to 98.5% full. Usually, I can upload many more than 3 photos before it goes up by even 0.1%, but for only 3 photos, greatly reduced in file size, to make it to up by 0.2%? Wth, WP?

Clearly, there is zero benefit to storing my images on Google Photo. I’ve tried embedding them, using the share link, etc., but instead of the images, the code shows instead.

So I guess I’ll make a vlog with the still shots, since it turned out to be a bigger job than I expected!

Very early on, though, I got an interruption. One of my daughters came out to let me know my mother had called; they were working in the kitchen and couldn’t get to the phone, but could hear my mother leave a message on the answering machine.

I considered calling her back later, but decided to do it right away.

*sigh*

When I got through to her, she was all chatty, asking how my cold was (I had started to feel one coming on, but that went away a while ago), before going on about how hers is no better (she sounds perfectly healthy), and it was so bad, she thought she was going to die, because of her breathing. At that point, I told her flat out, she says this every time, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t know whether to believe her or not. So she dropped it and instead said she called my sister and asked her to come and take “stuff”. Stuff? What kind of stuff? My mother hemmed and hawed before saying that my sister sews, so… then changed the subject. I guess she was trying to say fabric items? But I’ve helped pack her stuff into bags for previous bed bug spraying, so I don’t know what she’s talking about. With the way she hemmed and hawed before answering, then changing the subject, I suspect she’s trying to hide something from me, and intends to give my sister things that my only my brother, as her PoA, should be seeing.

Then she started asking if I knew about a distant relative that passed away, and I did, because my sister does genealogy stuff and shared the obituary online. My mother wanted me to go to the funeral on the weekend. I don’t know these people at all. I suggested my sister might go, since she’s the one who keeps track of all these relatives, but apparently she already said no, because the funeral is on the Sabbath. ??? I managed to preemptively cut off the possibility of my brother going, since he’s so incredibly busy already, and probably doesn’t even remember them anymore, giving how many decades it’s been since we’ve had any contact. Why my mother suddenly thought it was important for some member of the family to be there, I don’t know. We’ve had other distant relatives pass, and she was never like this before – though she did mention our vandal would probably be there, because apparently he’s friends with them, etc., etc. Okay. So then he should be there. Not me!

I finally got a chance to ask about her grocery status and it turns out that was why she was calling. Her fridge is empty, and she has only 1 bun left. Then she started telling me about the various things she was about to start cooking…

So did she want me to come over tomorrow?

Well, she’s making her list right now, and this and that and….

She would not commit to asking me to come over tomorrow, though when I asked if she wanted me to come over today, she said no. I kept trying to get more information out of her, like if she needed to go to the pharmacy or the bank or anywhere else, and she said now, but with much hesitation. So I finally just said, I’ll come over tomorrow, at the usual time. The usual time? Will I be bringing lunch? I told her that the last time I was at her grocery store, I saw they had the hot meals again, so I could pick up a couple and we’ll have them for lunch. She got downright excited about that!

As we were talking, I kept asking her, is there anything else you need? Anything else you want to tell me? Anything else that’s new?

Nothing came up about the exterminator notification letter or about Friday.

So I let it be. I’ll wait until my brother has had a chance to talk to her.

Which he has tried to do, while I was writing this, but there’s been no answer.

*sigh*

So that was quite the thing.

I’d told her from the start that I’d been working outside, so I finally brought the call to a close so I could get back to it. I think my mother was bored again. I do wish she wouldn’t wait until she’s running out of food, because calling me to help her with groceries! She refuses to do otherwise, though, telling me that if there’s food in the house, that means she has to eat it…

…

…

I never quite know how to take that. It’s not like she’s a glutton who sits around over eating all day, but she makes it sound like the mere act of eating food is a bad thing.

Anyhow.

I’ll be going there tomorrow, and we’ll see if she’s up to climbing into the truck to do her own shopping this time. With only one place to go, I think she might be up to it.

That done, it was back to working on the garden bed, which also involved pulling in the bowed out sides. I’ll do a vlog about that later. For now, I will say, I am really, really starting to hate those @#$@!% Chinese elms!!! Good grief!

I got it done, though, and even added sulfur to the soil at the end. It took way longer than it should have, but it’s done. Tonight, I’ll see if I can put together a vlog using my still shots, instead of posting any pictures. I suppose I could upload them to Instagram, but it seems not everyone can see them when I embed from Instagram, and I wouldn’t be able to explain what’s going on, anyhow.

I’d like to get more stuff done outside while the weather is good, but now I’m going to have to be at my mother’s at least 2 days this week, then on Friday I’m in the city.

This seems to be a constant pattern, pretty much since we’ve moved here. The more work we need to get on top of around here, the more external responsibilities end up taking priority. It seems to be getting worse, instead of better, to the point that we are falling behind rather than getting ahead. Such is life, but when it comes to things like my mother deliberately disrupting things and hurting people the way she does, it’s getting much harder not to get angry at her – and it takes a LOT to make me truly angry!

Thank God my brother is our “landlord” now. Otherwise, I know we would have moved out by now. Even the short time we were here and she still owned the property, we reached a point where we were seriously considering it. We would have put up with the financial hardship but, if we had, it would have caused more hardship for my brother than my mother, and none of us would have wanted that. He and his wife are the shining light of awesomeness that makes it all worthwhile!

Well, it’s getting late in the day. If I’m going to my mother’s tomorrow, and put a video together, I’d better get to it.

The Re-Farmer