Today, things are a supposed to be a bit cooler than the past couple of days, but it sure didn’t feel that way while doing my rounds this morning! I’m writing this at a little before 7:30pm, and we’re still at 25C/77F. We were expected to hit 27C/81F this afternoon, but I’m pretty sure we beat that.

We did have rain overnight. Enough to refill the rain barrel, so I made sure to put the diverter back on. I’m glad I did!

Though several hours had past, and it was quite hot out already, it was so humid that nothing was drying. The grass and plants, I would expect, but even the sidewalk and patio blocks, and the front steps, were all still damp. By the time I was done and got back to the house, my feet were soaked!

After finishing my morning rounds, I was planning to go to the city, but made sure to call my mother and check on how she was doing. She sounded really good. We talked a bit about her prescription change, and that I would be calling the clinic on Monday to get her an appointment with the doctor to talk about them and get her prescriptions updated for the pharmacy. Of course, now that she’s back on one pill she was told to stop for a short while, then get the blood tests she had done at the beginning of the week, plus another pill is now morning and evening, instead of just evening, she has immediately begun to associate starting the medications again with whatever she happens to be noticing at the time. Lately, it’s been “dry mouth”. Not anything close to the medical dry mouth that can be a symptom of various things, but she doesn’t understand just how extreme the medical condition can be. From what she describes, it makes me think she is either dehydrated (for all our encouragement, she is just not drinking anywhere near enough water) or sleeping with her mouth open at times – or both! Well, she woke up with a dry mouth this morning, so it must be because she restarted taking that one pill, yesterday. More alarming, she started saying that maybe she should stop taking it again, and…

I stepped in at that point and reminded her to not start messing with her medications. Again!

*sigh*

We talked about it for a bit, and I reminded her that she’s been complaining about that for quite a while now, both with and without that one pill. She did admit that this was true.

As we were talking and I mentioned I was planning to go to the city, as my own little “day off”. This is my birth month and, when I was asked if I wanted to do the usual take out again, I said no. I wanted a grocery shopping trip! Not just any grocery shopping trip, though, but a more luxurious one. 😄 So I got a rather generous budget, instead!

I mentioned my birthday was coming up, too, and my mother had forgotten about it completely. Which doesn’t bother me at all. If it weren’t for my family and Facebook, I’d forget my own birthday. I even forget my age, most of the time. 😄

Anyhow.

When she found out I was going to the city, my mother wondered if I could pick up some milk for her along the way. 😄 I had intended to take a different route, but that was fine. I told her I’d do it on the way out, not on the way back, since I would have things in the truck that needed to stay cold.

So that was worked out. Before heading out, I remembered to return our reusable bags – most of them insulated – to the truck, including one filled with ice packs.

Then it was off to my mother’s town, a quick stop to pick up her milk, and a brief visit.

She was sweet enough to have an envelop with a monetary gift for me. Which I made sure to say, she did not need to do. I appreciate the gift (gas money!), of course, but I don’t want her to think she’s in any way obligated to gave me anything.

I did have to chuckle when I transferred the cash to my wallet, though. It was $50, which was very kind of her. What is funny is, with my brother as PoA keeping track of her finances, I know that she sent our vandal a check for $1000 for his birthday, a few months ago.

*shakeshead*

She has such a terrible habit of making things worse for herself and is completely oblivious as to how what she does can be such a problem. I mean, it’s her money, she can do what she wants with it, but to even keep having contact with our vandal, after his years of verbal abuse and trying to get her to change her will to leave this farm to him instead of my brother… what was she thinking???

Ah, well.

Once done at her place, I made a stop at the gas station. This time, I just preset the pump to $30, then went inside when it was done to get some food and a drink for the road as well, since I forgot to have breakfast. After I paid for everything, making sure to say which pump I’d used, I drove away from the pump and off to the side and parked. After opening my drink and setting up my food (I even keep a plastic plate in the truck, to protect the seat, for times like this), I checked my phone for messages before leaving.

There was a purchase notification from my bank that I started to clear, when I noticed something strange about the number.

I hadn’t paid too much attention inside the gas station as I was paying, and I don’t normally keep the receipt. I thought I’d heard the woman on cash give me the total, but clearly I’d heard wrong. This number was way too low!

She forgot to charge me for the gas!

So I went back inside.

I explained that I hadn’t got my receipt, but I saw my bank notification, and I didn’t think they charged me for the gas. At this point, I was talking to two women behind the counter, including one I see almost all the time. As soon as I mentioned the gas not being included, they both looked at each other and said “The $30!” After I’d left, they’d noticed the indicator on the machine inside, but I guess neither had seen who had gotten gas there!

I’m so glad I checked my phone before I left! If I hadn’t, I would not have seen the notification until I’d parked at my first stop in the city! I’m also glad I have my bank app set up to send me those notifications, too, I might not have noticed at all, even when checking my accounts, later!

Once that was cleared up, it was off to the city. I had a regular shopping list as well as personal shopping, and my first stop was at a large Walmart. I ended up getting most of what was on my list there, including more kibble. For myself, I picked up a couple of t-shirts, since I’m managed to stain pretty all of mine, including my new ones. I tried looking at shoes, too. I need to replace my indoor shoes, which I’d found at a Walmart, but I just can’t find another pair like them. The ones that are similar don’t fit my feet right. I ended up having to skip the shoes again. I did amuse myself by first looking at women’s shoes, including some “wide” pairs. Ha! Wide compared to what? I was looking at several sizes larger than my feet, and they were all so narrow, I didn’t even bother trying any on.

It’s not just a problem with shoes. Most of my clothes these days come from the men’s section. Even the Plus Size women’s clothes are just wrong for my body type. The fabrics and overall quality tend to suck, too, and even plain shirts tend to be more expensive.

So I’m happy with my very plain, very generic, men’s t-shirts!

That done, I packed everything into the truck, but was left with a bit of a conundrum. One of the things on my list that I picked up was a couple of packs of ice. They went into an insulated bag along with some other things that needed to be kept cold, plus ice packs I’d brought from home. I made sure to keep those bags in the cab, with air conditioning, but once the truck is parked, it gets so hot, the insulated bags can only do so much!

It just meant I needed to do the rest of my planned shopping a bit faster.

The next stop was at the international grocery store, which I haven’t been to in ages. It shares a parking lot with a Dollarama, so I dashed in there, first. They had the taller, plastic coated metal support stakes in stock, so I bought 8 of them. These ones each some with an adjustable plant tie, and cost $3. The same size support stakes, without the ties, cost more than twice as much at Canadian Tire, and Walmart doesn’t even have them.

That was my mother’s birthday gift to me. 😄

Part of why I wanted to go to the international grocery store was to go to their eatery section and treat myself to dim sum for lunch. Oh, how I love their dim sum!

It was also the place to pick up a nice selection of cheeses and charcuterie meats. I even found truffle enhanced gouda this time!

The fungus, not the chocolate.

I’m thinking, a Columbo marathon and some charcuterie with the girls. My husband wouldn’t be joining us, though. He likes Columbo. He doesn’t like charcuterie. 😄

While I was in the city, I got a message from my husband. He told me they’d just been hit with a wicked thunderstorm! They didn’t lose power or anything, but there was definitely a nearby lightning strike!

There was also a deluge.

Did I mention I was glad I put that rain diverter over the full barrel?

It was probably another hour and half after the storm ended, that I got home. Before leaving the city, I’d sent a message about driving into the yard to unload. My daughter went out to check the status of things, and suggested that was not going to be an option.

The moat was back.

Wow.

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When I got to the gate, the driveway was still full of water. So was the entry through the vehicle gate into the yard. The ground there is already really soft, but with open water all around behind the garage again, the truck would have torn up the grass, or even gotten stuck, if I’d driven in!

My daughter helped me carry everything in. We didn’t even try to use use the wagon. Once loaded with things like 9kg bags of kibble, it would have sunk into the mud, too!

Once everything was unloaded, I gave the cats their evening feeding, then checked around the yard. It was the wheelbarrow that really showed me just how much of a deluge we got. This morning, the wheelbarrow had just a couple of inches of water in one corner. That corner now had about 8 or 9 inches in it! All the low spots around the garden were full of water.

Everything in the raised beds, though, is very happy! They got their fertilizer just a little while ago, and now they got a deep watering. Nothing seemed to be damaged by the rain itself. The winter squash is getting really big, and even the much smaller melon vines are seeing a growth spurt!

As for the cats…

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I’m happy to see that Brussel’s babies are hanging out around the house now! Well. At least the orange one. The other two are black and white and, while one has a distinctive patters on its nose, there are so many black and whites or grey and whites, and they run around so much, it’s hard to identify them at times.

Thanks to a donation of kitten kibble, I’ve been making a point of mixing a bit of it in with the adult kibble, then putting the food around outside the sun room, first. Once the adults are distracted by eating, I put kitten kibble in the bowls inside the sun room, where the kittens prefer to hang out. Not all of them, though. Quite a few are coming to the house to eat, but they haven’t discovered the sun room, yet. By including some kitten kibble with the adult kibble that gets spread in some of the areas they are willing to go to, they will at least get some of it before the adults eat it all!

When I was done with the feeding and checking of the yard, though, I wasn’t able to go back in through the sun room, as Adam was busy nursing some babies in front of it. So I went in through the main doors, then went into the old kitchen to finish putting things away. From there, I spotted Adam through the window. She had moved outside, and was nursing a whole bunch of kittens – including Brussel’s orange baby! She had kittens climbing all over each other, trying to reach the nip, and she was just laying there, putting up with it all!

What a good creche mother she is!

I do sometimes see two other mamas nursing babies besides their own, in or near the sun room, but none on the scale that Adam does!

So, that has been my day today. All in all, I’m pretty happy with a more relaxed trip to the city, and am looking forward to treating myself to some really awesome cheeses!

I wonder if the girls are up to a Columbo marathon tonight?

The Re-Farmer