So today ended up way longer than originally expected. But the, I originally didn’t have anything outside of home planned for today at all. I even offered it up as my one day that I could do my mother’s grocery shopping for her this year, and she said no, so I expected to have another day to work outside.
Then I got the call from home care last night, saying there was no one to do a med assist for this morning, so that got added on. When I called my mother to let her know, she told me she had a grocery list started, so that got added on. Then I was in contact with the rescue that would be taking Poirot’s orphan babies, and that got added on, which would get combined with a trip into town to refill our water jobs.
I still expected to get things done at home.
Ha!
First off, my body let me know in no uncertain terms, I needed to back off. While sitting at my computer shortly before going to bed last night, I got hit with another Charlie horse. This time, the back of my right thigh. I managed to stand up and grab the tube of tei fu lotion, then stagger over to my husband’s room. My husband, darling that he is, caught on as soon as he saw my face, what was going on. Even with his door closed, so I could draw my drawers for him to work the lotion into my leg, my older daughter could hear me and came dashing over as fast as she could so see if I needed help. So she was able to assist me with getting around and eventually to bed.
So… definitely not a day to overdo things, today!
I found myself up at 5am, though, and unable to get back to sleep, so I did my morning rounds pretty early. The outside cats were quite happy with that. I got kitten food bowls set up on the kitchen floor before I headed out with the dry kibble and had a whole row of kittens already ready and waiting at the door, and went straight to the kibble!
While doling out the dry kibble, I had a little fuzzy surprise at the shrine!
Two, actually, but one ran off immediately.
Sitting on the box nest was a little orange baby. The one that ran away looked to be a tortie, but it was such a short glimpse, it was hard to be sure. The orange one ran off a short distance when I came to put kibble in the bowls. As I came around later, I found a white and grey, too!
From what I could see, the orange kitten and the possible tortie are Sprout’s babies, and the white and grey matches the feral mama with no name. They have finally brought their babies to the yard!
When I started setting out the containers with cat soup, I made sure to leave one under the shrine for the newbies. Later on, I saw both cats and mamas – and very round soon to be mamas *sigh* – enjoying it. Lady Hypotenose and Ink are both heavily pregnant now.
*sigh*
After the cats were fed, I did the rest of the morning rounds, and made sure to grab a carrier for Poirot’s littles.
Then it was time to head over to my mother’s for her med assist that home care wasn’t able to do this morning. I got there a bit earlier than they had her scheduled for. When I walked in, though, the first thing I saw was a laundry basket.
Her time slot on the shared laundry calendar is for Friday afternoon, not the morning.
Thankfully, the unit’s marked in for the morning were not using the laundry room today!
There was also a bouquet of artificial flowers. When she’d gone to the cemetery with my sister to leave fresh artificial flowers and family gravesites, they didn’t have enough, so her mother’s gravesite didn’t get any. My sister got more flowers and left them with my mother, and could I put those in the cemetery for her?
Thankfully, it was very much on the way for us, but I’ll get to that, later.
While doing my mother’s meds, she gave me the usual hard time about how I’m doing it instead of them. She’s angry at home care for calling me to do her meds, but she takes her anger out on me. Then she demanded I leave out her other two meds of the day, because on the assumption no one was going to show up for her two evening med assists. Which I refused to do.
I was able to get her to focus on her shopping list, though, and went over that before heading out. I was going to start her two loads laundry (there are only 2 washers and 2 driers for the entire building. It’s a small building) before I left when she told me there was something written on one of the machines she couldn’t understand. It turned out to be a hand written note saying the machine wasn’t working, and what it was doing that it shouldn’t, and that it was going to be replaced.
So that doubled the time for her washing.
*sigh*
Today’s errands included a stop at the pharmacy for a couple of things. She had called them about her refills and was told they weren’t ready, so she arranged delivery for Monday. Which is her last day of meds in the bubble packs. Her inhaler was also out, so she as getting a refill on that, too. So once at the pharmacy, I checked if her meds were ready first, just in case. The bubble packs weren’t, but her inhaler was. Since she was out completely, I decided to take that.
That little thing cost almost $200!!!
I paid for it myself, since that was more than all the cash she gave me for her shopping – and it was more than enough for the day’s needs. I made sure to call her before I went to the grocery store to let her know, so she wouldn’t be surprised by it when I got back with her stuff. She got all angry because it was supposed to be delivered on Monday, and why did I pick it up?
…
I told her, because you’re out completely! This way, she would have it for her last med assist of the day.
She was still upset even when I got back with her groceries. I think it was partly because she was going to pay me back with cash, and she’s been increasingly weird about that. After I put everything away, she started digging through her purse when I suggested a check, so I could do a mobile deposit rather than driving to the nearer city to deposit it, and she could hang on to her cash. She was quite happy with that suggestion.
So I stayed around for the next while, waiting on the one laundry machine to be done. As we were talking, things went back to the homecare situation. I ended up calling the case coordinator and, much to my surprise, actually got her instead of a machine! 😄 I let her know about the missed meds yesterday morning. She looked up my mother’s file, and there were no notations for that time slot. They’ve got some new people – but were still short staffed for this morning! The person that was on the printed out schedule they leave for my mother, with the names for each time slot, was not supposed to come that morning. A new person was. There were other issues related to the staffing changes, including shift confusion that lead to my mother having someone show up twice in the mornings.
After the call, my mother had her usual unfortunate things to say about the case coordinator, and the home care workers. She can’t understand that the case coordinator is not the shift scheduler, and they don’t all magically know everything about her file, including things they were not told by the home care aides!
*sigh*
Because of the broken down washing machine, I was still there when my mother’s Meals on Wheels was delivered. I used that time to go back to the laundry room, where I could fold things, though I didn’t have time to put them away.
Once the laundry was brought in, I soon made my goodbyes. My mother must have been seriously tired, because she made no effort to get me to stay!
From there, I headed home, but was soon heading out again, this time with my daughter and Poirot’s kittens in the carrier.
I’d been messaging my contact at the large animal rescue about the times, but they hadn’t seen the most recent one. My messages weren’t even being seen at that point. We brought the kittens, anyhow and swung by on our way out. My contact took the kittens, but not before I was able to get one last picture.
When we got there, they were in the middle of unloading a horse, so we didn’t stay long.
I’m going to miss those babies!
Our first stop after that was the local cemetery to take care of the flowers for my grandmother. Then we visited other family members laid to rest there. I noticed that my aunt and uncle did not have any flowers at all. My daughter ended up making a little bouquet of wildflowers she found nearby for them. That was very sweet of her!
From there, we went to the cemetery my MIL is buried in. We had tried to go there, at my FIL’s request, as he physically cannot visit the gravesite anymore, but never found the stone. My daughter had accompanied my husband to the funeral as his mobility assistant, but she was so sick that day, she barely remembered anything, never mind where it was. What we did find was a sign saying that, due to flooding that spring, some of the stones were damaged, so they had been removed for repair and would be returned another time. We figured that’s what happened to her stone!
So this time, we expected to be able to find it.
We didn’t.
I finally messaged my husband, asking if he could remember, and he gave me an area that I’d already gone through. Then he messaged her exact plot coordinates.
I had walked right past it and never saw it! It’s a very low profile stone, but I’d actually noticed the one next to it, because of the interesting solar lights around it.
My daughter stayed by the stone while I went back for the truck, which was parked at the opposite end of the cemetery!
We had brought a solar powers light up cross along with the flowers and vase we’d picked up and made up a pretty bouquet. While we did select the heaviest vase available, it was clearly not going to be heavy enough to stay upright with flowers in it. So we went into town to a dollar store – the only place that would have was we were looking for – and got several bags of decorative glass beads to weight it down. My daughter thought the bouquet was looking a bit sparse, so she looked at the floral display while I headed over to another section. I picked up a set of solar powered fairy lights, while my daughter got some greenery, then back to the cemetery we went.
Where we found the vase already fallen over!
Not broken, thankfully.
I helped my daughter with redoing the whole thing, as she added the fairy light string into the vase, then added some of the decorative glass beads, and kept on going. The light string was long enough for plenty to be inside the vase, and still have enough to be wrapped around the bouquet, as the pieces were put back in.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t test it, even to see if we had turned it on or not. It had a mode setting, too, but the solar charged batteries needed much more time before we could test it out. We’ll just have to come back later, when it’s darker and the batteries have had time to charge.
My daughter did a great job making it all look pretty.
At this point, I was realized I hadn’t eaten anything since my very early breakfast – and my daughter hasn’t eaten at all – so back into town we went, this time to get something to eat! Meanwhile, my husband had messaged me with a request, which meant going to a store across the street from where we eat.
Then, finally, we could get the water bottle refills we’d gone into town to do in the first place!
That done, we could finally heat home, with only a brief stop at the rescue to retrieve our carrier. The rescue is officially open to the public this weekend, so they were really busy, and we didn’t get a chance to see them where they were set up for now.
By the time we got home, it was well past time for the outside cats to be fed again. Once we were unloaded by the house, I went to do that, and was able to distract cats away from the truck so my daughter could park it. Sir Robin likes to run under the truck!
Once again, I made sure to leave a bowl with the cat soup under the shrine for the new kittens, though I when I finally did see one, it was just the orange one.
Around this time, I got a message from my brother and SIL, letting us know they were on their way here, to spend the weekend in their trailer.
With the new kittens in mind, I sort of skipped my evening rounds and instead focused on getting the isolation shelter out for cleaning. The plastic around the bottom for winterizing was removed, along with everything inside it, so I could start hosing it down. When building it, I tried my best to have it open and accessible enough to reach inside for cleaning. Some corners are still had to get to.
I was still working on that when my brother and SIL arrived. They had lots to set up so, I left them to it.
The isolation shelter is now set up near the shrine and catio. What I’m hoping is that the new kittens will discover it as a place with food and water and shelter (the beds and cat blankets were hosed down and will be returned later). Which would make it far easier to catch them, if necessary!
Once my brother and SIL had settled in, and I popped over for a good, long visit. While I try to keep them up to date with messages, when it comes to my mother, some things just need to be talked about in person. Especially with some of the things she sometimes says. It’s a good thing we keep the lines of communication between us as much as we do, because my mother has a habit of saying different things to each of us, and trying to play us against each other.
By the time I headed back to the house, it was starting to get dark. The yard light is nice and bright, though, so I could see where I was going…
… and activity in the grass!
Yes, I saw kittens.
There are at least four of them in total, and one of them appears to be a calico.
I get the impression Sprout and the other feral mama have been co-parenting the litters together, too.
Well, I hope they discover the cat isolation shelter.
Tomorrow, I was expecting to do our Costco shopping, but my younger daughter is dealing with a lot of pain right now and wouldn’t be able to come along to help me. My arm is much better today, but clambering in and out of the back of the truck would certainly not be a good idea! With the stock up trip we’ve already done, we can get away with waiting until Monday. That’s the day before Canada Day, so Costco will likely be insanely busy. We’ll deal!
Which means that tomorrow, I get to stay home. One of the things I want to do is set up a fresh litter box and clean cat beds inside the isolation shelter. I spotted Ink dashing around in a way that made me think she’s looking for somewhere to have her babies. If I can set up a nice, cozy “nest” for her in the isolation shelter, that would be idea! Well, not as ideal as having them in the sun room, but she’s too feral for that, I think.
We said goodbye to three kittens today – and said hello to at least four, by the end of the day.
I’m hoping things work out with this other rescue, with the one that’s been helping us shutting down, soon, and that Poirot’s babies will get lots of love and attention, and get adopted soon!
We shall see how it works out!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 