Good grief.

Okay.

My goal for today was to finish sorting enough aluminum to fill the truck bed, go to the salvage yard to drop it off, then go to the nearest Walmart to meet with the Cat Lady and pick up more cat food. We also need a few more things for the bathtub tap repair.

It was raining all morning, so I backed the truck out of the garage so I could work on the cans in the garage. Once I had ten bags, I turned the truck around to make it easier to load. It took longer than expected, and I was no longer sure I’d be able to connect with the Cat Lady.

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I was able to get 10 large bags in the truck. All strapped down an ready to go.

I got about half a mile before the onboard computer started dinging, and I got a red flashing “oil pressure low, shut of engine” warning.

So I pulled over and shut it off. After waiting a bit, I tried again, but it went off again almost immediately.

We were due for an oil change, but I’ve never had this happen before!

I ended up walking home to get some oil, and my younger daughter walked back with me. As we were going along, we saw a vehicle stop beside the truck for a while. The driver stopped again when he reached us. It turns out he was a neighbour from up the road. He was hauling a flatbed trailer, so he went home to drop that off, then came back to help us.

Long story short, we manage to get the truck home, and I was able to park it in such a way that it can be easily accessed by a tow truck.

Yup. We are down to no vehicle right now.

And we’re going to run out of kibble, tomorrow.

F***

I updated the Cat Lady and she said she would get cat food to us, but I have no idea how. Someone would have to deliver it to our place, since we can’t go anywhere.

A tow has been arranged for tomorrow morning, and the garage is already expecting it. We’ll get a diagnostic and an estimate, but we won’t have a budget for any repairs until my husband’s disability comes in at the end of the month.

Today is the 22nd. CPP Disability comes in on the 29th.

That’s a week with no transportation. Heck, I don’t even know how I will get to the garage to pick up the truck once it’s repaired – assuming it’s a repair we can afford. It’s entirely possible the problem is gunk in a sensor. Or it could be something major. The engine itself sounds just fine.

Meanwhile, we’ll need to take off the load of aluminum before the truck is taken in, but that will wait until tomorrow morning. I just don’t have the spoons to do it tonight.

I’m going to have to go through our pantry and freezer and see what we can use for cat food.

The past 12 months has seen so many things breaking down this year. It’s been insane. It seems like every time we take a step forward, we get yanked back five.

One of those things that broke down has been my mother’s car – our back up vehicle – which started to make a banging noise. Since then, it now has a tire that keeps going flat, even though we’ve been using the compressor to pump it back up every couple of days. Even if it were running, though, we no longer have the budget for insurance and fuel for two vehicles anymore. Partly because we now have the truck payments, but also because the cost of everything has gone up so much.

I am just so tired, right now. Not physically tired. Not even emotionally tired. More psychologically tired.

It was around this time, 7 years ago, that my husband and younger daughter flew out here earlier than planned, as my FIL was in the hospital and things were not looking good for a while. I started this blog on the 29th of October, 2017, and we weren’t all united again here until the middle of November. Those first few months saw some rough times, and we’ve certainly had our challenges, every year since. Even so, we’ve have had so many things break down, one after the other, like we have in the past 12 months.

Ah, well. We’ll deal.

What other choice to we have?

The Re-Farmer