Yesterday was such a good day! I’m just so happy to have finally got the cat isolation shelter to the point that we can use it (though it still doesn’t have a latch on the ramp-door).

I didn’t over exert myself.

Honest. I didn’t.

Working on the shelter was mostly a lot of back and forth to get things cut and nailed or screwed into place. I wasn’t doing anything heavy or strenuous.

Yet, apparently, I overdid it.

I was in bed, just finishing my devotions, when I tried to roll over.

Thankfully, I still had my phone in my hand when the leg cramps hit. I was just able to get so I could sit on the side of the bed, but couldn’t go more than that. I was able tap “help” to my older daughter, and that was it.

She didn’t need more information to know what was going on. Which is good, yet not good, since it shows now often I’ve been getting these, lately.

I’ve had some bad Charlie horses before but, this time, it hit me in both thighs, on all sides and severe enough for pain to shoot down into my calves and up into my hips.

I couldn’t bend, I couldn’t straighten, I could barely use my arms to shift. Even taking the ibuprofen and magnesium my daughter brought me was difficult.

She stayed with me until the painkillers kicked in. Even that was weird. First my right leg, then my left, just suddenly relaxed, with a jolt. Even so, my daughter had to lift me legs for me so I could get back into bed, because the muscles were quivering so much.

As I slowly recovered, and I was able to talk, my daughter mentioned looking up the cause of these. She thought at first it might be lack of hydration, but she knows I stay on top of that. Her next thought was perhaps a lack of salt.

My initial reaction was no, but then I realized that yesterday, I’d eaten almost no salt all day.

It’s the only thing either of us could think of that might apply.

She ended up bringing me a few rock crystals of Himalayan pink salt for me to chew on.

I did eventually fall asleep, but it was many hours before my thigh muscles felt anywhere close to normal. It’s almost 8pm as I write this, and they still feel trembly at times.

My older daughter took care of doing the softened kibble feeding of the outside cats this morning for me, so I could try to sleep in – or at least stay in bed longer.

In the end, if was cats going bonkers, chasing the lady beetles that have gotten inside, that had me giving up on trying to get more sleep.

With the various plumbing issues we have right now, we’ve all been slowly chipping away at dishes and cooking as little as possible. The kettle has been kept going pretty much all the time. Between washing ourselves, using boiled water to soak the outside cats’ kibble, and just general clean up, we’ve taken to simply filling it and setting it to boil so there’s at least warm water available for the next person who needs it.

I did eventually make it outside. It started to rain, so I moved the shallots that were hanging on the high raised bed frame to cure, into the garage. Another couple of days, and they will be braided and brought into the root cellar.

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I also got a heat lamp set up in the sun room, as the nights are going to be going below freezing soon. I was going to put the second one in the isolation shelter, ready to be plugged in as needed, but I will have to find a way to secure it better. I want it to be hanging from the centre of the roof, but I will need a little step ladder to reach. 😄 So that will wait for now. I did make sure both sliding panels were closed, though, to keep the weather out of the upper level. There is just the ramp door to get in and out.

The cats quite like going in there!

It had been my plan to clean up and put things away in the garage, now that the isolation shelter no longer needs to be in there, so we can finally park the truck in the garage again.

That didn’t happen!

Maybe tomorrow.

This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and we do have a turkey thawing out. It’ll be ready to be cooked tomorrow, so that’s when we’ll do what we can for a thanksgiving dinner, even if we don’t end up eating it until much later.

My daughters emptied out the wardrobe of my husband’s things – mostly his old office clothes, which he has little occasion to wear these days. They all went into the laundry, and my daughters got the wardrobe upstairs.

Which means my husband now has access to the closet in his room.

We can also bring back his tiny medication fridge, and the table it sits on, back into his room, though that will be done tomorrow.

He’s going to need some sort of small shelf, though.

While I was outside, my mother called. After a bit of telephone tag, we finally connected.

I’m glad to say that she has been really happy with her Meals on Wheels deliveries. She is really enjoying the food, and not having to cook it herself! This is going to work out much better for her than the bulk meal prep that home care offers.

“One of the ladies” told her that the hospital in town has a new doctor, and she told me we should make an appointment with her.

My mother is STILL talking about changing doctors, while she’s in the middle of being assessed for placement in a nursing home or supportive living. If I thought it would actually help any, sure – if nothing else, it would mean her current doctor won’t have a racist AF patient. The problem is, my mother is never happy with any doctor she has. This is a female doctor, and my mother doesn’t think women can be good doctors, just nurses, so we already know she won’t be happy with any female doctor. Even with male doctors, if they don’t tell her what she wants to hear, she’ll find something about them that disqualifies them in her mind. And if there isn’t something there, she’ll invent something. Even doctors she starts out liking, she’ll turn on them in a heartbeat.

She has a very long history of doing this sort of thing.

Eventually, I was able to update my mother on the septic repairs. When I first told her about discovering there was a leak at the expeller, she offered to pay for repairs. I ran the estimates by her and that we were going with the company that was closer.

Today, I told her how this company had stopped returning my calls, so I contacted the other company and ended up talking to the owner.

As I was trying to tell her this, she kept interrupting. I should just get my brother to do fix it, she tells me.

I had to explain, an excavator is needed. It has to be dug up.

We should just have it moved.

???

Moved? That would be an even bigger job to do!

She is not at all understanding our system here. My dad took care of all this stuff, and it’s as if she’s never seen the expeller before, even though she remembers the other things in the area, like the water fountain for the cows that was set up, along with a tap in the barn and another water fountain on the other side of the barn, all piped at the same time.

Then she started telling me my brother should be doing this, not me, because this is a man’s thing to do (talking to companies to arrange repairs, etc.), and my brother is somehow dumping this on me. I told her, this is my “job”. It’s part of the deal I had with her, and that I now have with my brother.

As all this was going on, she also started saying how, oh, someone told her that the farm is not hers anymore, it’s not her responsibility…

Yup.

She started backing out of her offer to pay for the repairs.

After she made a few passive aggressive threats about that, I finally told her, stop playing games with me. Are you going to pay for it, or not? Because if you’re not, I have to call the company to cancel the job.

Thankfully, there is now at least some water running through the expeller, so it would probably last us through the winter, but still… that would not be good.

Well, my mother, being my mother, bounced from saying, yes, she would pay for it (making it sound like I asked her to, rather than being something she offered to do) and why should she pay for it? At one point, she asked me, if I were in her place, would I do it? I said yes, if I could, I would.

I don’t think she expected that.

Anyhow.

This is another old thing with her. She will offer something, then when the time comes, start to back off, and use the offer to manipulate people. I have no patience for what is basically psychological abuse. Especially at a time like this, when we have so many things breaking down at once. I did manage to mention the hot water tank issues, but she just blew right past that. I doubt she even heard me. She even tried to drag my brother into the whole thing, and why doesn’t he call her?

I finally just said, it’s because you do stuff like this, and I just can’t handle this right now.

I then said we would talk later, said goodbye and hung up.

After that, I sent a message to my brother, updating him about the call, telling him it looks like my mother is backing away from her offer of paying for the repairs, so I’ll probably have to call and cancel the job.

While I was writing that message, my older daughter walked in and asked me if I knew what was going on with the bathroom fan.

Yup.

Guess what else is no longer working!

We had that fan’s motor replaced just a few years ago. The previous motor was the original, installed in the mid 70’s.

On top of all this, there were just lots of other little things going wrong, all day.

I did get one good phone call, though.

My brother called.

My mother had called him not long after talking to me.

She never mentioned her call with me at all, but she did bring up that she’d “heard” he was here at the farm yesterday. Yes. Yes, he was, he told her. He’d dropped some stuff off, then checked on the hot water tank and the bathroom for us.

He had to distract her from jumping to all sorts of conclusions about that.

She brought up wanting him to come to put away her air conditioner for the winter, which he’d already said he was planning to do. He won’t be able do it until after Nov. 1, though. When he goes there, he has to plan to be there for several hours, and it’s really hard for him to carve out that much time in his schedule.

As they were talking, the topic of the roof came up and he was saying how great it was that it was done, and that it has a 25 yr warranty, and they’ll both be gone before when.

What do you mean, she wanted to know. Is he sick?

…

No… 25 years is a long time. The average life span for a male is 80 years, and lots can happen in 25 years.

That led to them talking about the message our vandal somehow managed to leave on my brother’s cell phone, and the terrible things he was saying about my brother and I. My brother even managed to even address how our vandal does and says all these terrible things, and she treats him so well, but my brother and I love her so much, and take care of her, but she treats us to cruelly. He even brought up how we are dealing with so many problems right now, and her response is to mess with us. Why is that?

She started to go into her usual justifications, on how she loves everyone equally, but he cut that off, because no. She doesn’t.

He’s not sure if he managed to get through to her, how illogical her behaviour in that respect it. Particularly when it came to her saying she would pay for the repairs, then backing off. My mother, however, is acting as though I’d asked her to pay for it, which I would never do. “Donations gratefully accepted”, as my late brother used to say, but help from my mother tends to come with a high price tag, and if there were any way we could get the repairs done without her help, we’d do it.

In the end, though, my brother assured me that my mother will keep her word about paying for the repairs. The amount isn’t all that much – for her, at least – and she’s thrown twice as much at our vandal, just because, before. More than once.

Mostly, though, he wanted to make sure I didn’t cancel the repair job!

I told him I wouldn’t.

So that, at least was a positive end to the day.

Well. Not that the day is over yet, but close enough!

Tonight, I think I’ll make sure to take some ibuprofen instead of my usual acetaminophen, and maybe make sure I’ve eaten enough salt with my meals, before going to bed!

I think an early bed time is a very good idea, today.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

The Re-Farmer