Today was forecast to be a hot one, before things cool down a little bit for the next while. We surpassed our predicted high and reached 30C/86F.

Tomorrow’s predicted high is supposed to be either 18C/64F or 20C/68F, depending on which app I look at. Also depending on which app I look at, we are now supposed to get rain starting tomorrow evening until about midnight – or it’s supposed to rain both day and night!

*sigh*

This afternoon, my older daughter and I finally messed around with the portable AC unit. It would start, then immediately shut itself down again. So we wrestled it out of the living room (that 70’s shag carpet is not helpful for the wheels! 😄), fighting cats away from the divider door into the living room, then to the steps between the new and old parts of the house. I had a bucket ready and we set it to drain.

It didn’t sound like there was any water in it, though I could hear some minor splashing as we were moving it, and nothing but a few drops of water came out.

So… the water reservoir being full was not the issue.

We had this happen to use last year, and we never found out why it kept stopping then, either. However, after we went through the process of draining it, it started working again. Would that happen now?

Yes.

Once we got the AC back in the living room and set up, it turned on and stayed on.

It did stop cooling faster than expected, but the louvers were still open. When I checked it, I lowered the temperature setting and it turned on again. It seems the default setting for the AC to stop cooling is 23C/73F, which is ridiculously warm for indoors. I dropped it to 16C. It’s been running pretty much ever since.

We already have an oscillating fan set up on the piano, aimed to blow cool air from the living room into the dining room, so that helps a lot.

My daughter and I then set up the hardware cloth “door” to the old basement – though we went down and swept water into the floor drain or sump pump reservoir, first. With the most recent rain, there’s quite a lot of water down there again, even with two blower fans, and and oscillating fan in the old basement, a box fan set up in the old basement window, and another oscillating fan running in the new basement. That floor is starting to show more damp seeping through the concrete. Not a good sign for the weeping tile! I might wet up the old blower fan in there, but with so many fans already running, I really don’t want to set up another one. The amount of electricity we’re using right now must be insane. I’ve got a box fan in my office/bedroom, my husband has two box fans in his bedroom, and my daughters have several fans upstairs, which is the worst area for overheating. With the humidity, it’s just brutal on my daughter’s computer. She actually sets up ice packs wrapped in towels near her computer while she’s working.

With how hot things are, the last thing we wanted to do was heat up the house with cooking, and my daughter offered to order in. We ended up going to a pizza place in town and getting a jumbo (18″) size pizza for each of us, to feed us for the next couple of days!

The pizza place didn’t open until 4, so I had some time to wait and checked to see if we had any parcels in. I wasn’t actually expecting any. There were two.

Once of them was the drain auger my husband ordered! It wasn’t supposed to come in for another four days!

What I was really looking for was our 4 pound bucket of lysine. This time, in the orders list, it said “your order may be lost”. I checked the tracking and that was unchanged – it said it was picked up by the delivery company and that’s it.

There was a “contact seller” option, so I started that process.

Which is when I discovered the seller had cancelled the order, and that the refund would be processed in 3-5 business days.

The seller cancelled the order on May 31st.

No explanation was given.

We still need lysine. We’re almost completely out.

I mentioned it to my husband, so he could check his Amazon credit card and see if the refund went through. I guess it did, because he ordered it again. We now have a delivery date of July 2-4.

Interestingly, the cost was lower than the first time we tried to order it.

When 4:00 rolled around, we called in our pizza order, making sure to tell them where we were driving in from. It takes us a bit longer to get there than for them to make the pizzas. With a stop at the post office having to be done along the way, since it was closing at 5, I have gave them a rough idea of how long it would take us to get there.

It ended up taking a bit longer than usual for me to just get out the door! When I got to the store the post office is in, I saw a box next to a counter by the door. The owner saw me and just said, that’s the one! 😄

I even made sure to back the truck up to the door, because I knew it would be larger and heavier. I got the other package and loaded that first, then tried to figure out how to get the auger loaded. The box wasn’t particularly big, but it was pretty beat up looking. The delivery folks clearly had problems with it. I finally just picked it up was as good a grip as I could – which wasn’t very good. I’m so glad I backed the truck up to the door, because having that slip out of my hands while trying to go further would have really sucked! The owner was a sweetheart and already holding the door open for me. It was definitely heavier than I expected. Later on, I looked up the specs and the actual weight. It’s 36.2kg – just ounces under 80 pounds. That’s just the auger. Not the other stuff shipped with it (bits, hoses, etc.) or the packaging.

From there I started for town to pick up our order, only to realize it was almost the time I told them I’d be there, so I pulled over and gave them a call. I didn’t want them to think it was a bogus order.

When I got home, I pulled into the yard so I could back up to the house. I tried to be careful about it and avoid the area I usually turn around in, since it is still basically a pond.

I got stuck.

I could go forward a bit, but when I tried to reverse again, the tires just spun. I had to set the truck to 4 wheel drive to be able back out without completely tearing apart the grass. We’ll have a bit of repair to do once things dry out a bit – if they get a chance to try out a bit! – but not too much.

Getting through our own door, with the arm bar in the door jab, was going to be awkward, so my daughters were already waiting for me to get the door open (and keep cats away) and angle the box through the doorway.

So it’s in – and it’s still in its box! It’ll be easier, once it’s unpacked, since it’s on wheels and had a handle, but I am not looking forward to getting that thing down the old basement stairs. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think we should take it down the new basement stairs, then rolls it through to the old basement, where it will be used the most.

We’ll figure it out.

Needless to say, I didn’t get any more work done in the garden, with this heat. Tomorrow should be better for that sort of work, and I should be able to get it done before the rain reaches us.

So much for the 5 day break in the rain that was forecast yesterday. Even the rain expected on Friday has changed to being all day, instead of just the evening.

So we’ve been catching up on inside stuff, like doing laundry.

Extra laundry, thanks to cat messes. 🙄

I’ve also been keeping an eye on the critter cam, which has been a delight.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Re-Farmer (@the.refarmer)

Junk Pile showed up regularly and would nurse her babies on the floor mat in the middle of the room. At one point, she got up and left behind a fan of kittens that fell asleep as they nursed! I’m really glad to see her going in there to take care of her kittens, rather than her kittens having to leave the sun room.

I’m not so glad to see the skunks show up, though only because they eat the cat’s food.

I’m super not glad to see the racoon show up.

It does seem to be leaving the bigger kittens alone, probably because they can run away and hide under the counter shelf. Eating kibble is less effort, but that doesn’t mean it won’t try something, now that it’s done it once.

The image I was able to get of the kittens was a screen cap of the critter cam on my phone, cropped down to just the kittens. The image quality really sucks. We’re starting to look at possibly betting an indoor monitor – the kind sold as baby or pet monitors. They can pan and zoom, which is something this camera can’t do. The biggest selling point for me is that we wouldn’t have to buy an Amazon subscription to be able to have the live feed running continuously. We’d also have the option of using a micro SD to record things. So we’re looking at different versions, some of which come with their own display device, so we wouldn’t be having to use our phones. Some come with multiple cameras, which has me thinking… it would save me some anxiety to have one set up in the basement to monitor the septic pump!

We shall see. Not a thing we can get soon, but they can be surprisingly inexpensive.

Aww… I’m watching the critter cam right now. Syndol, who still has a limp, is eating in the sun room, and there’s a kitten rolling around on the floor beside him.

Anyhow. Time to get to bed! I want to get working in the garden early tomorrow morning, and take advantage of the cool!

The Re-Farmer