We had some more snow last night. Checking the security cameras, I saw that the road was plowed. We’re going to have to dig out the end of the driveway.
I also started getting a lot of motion detection notifications from the garage cam. I never saw what was triggering it, though.
What I did see was this.
A pair of matching hearts in the snow.
Who made these?
So I started going through the history, checking both stills and video clips. They weren’t there on Sunday, but as I watched myself walking towards the gate to meet my SIL on Monday, there they were, slightly less snow covered, but also less visible in the diffused light at the time.
It took a bit of going over the files more, then remembering that the motion sensor is triggered by people (and the occasional cat or deer), but not vehicles. We haven’t been able to figure out why (this is one of my brother’s new security cameras, not one we got).
My brother and nephew were here on Sunday. I saw them getting into their care to leave, but the camera wasn’t triggered by the care as they backed up towards the driveway then turned to the gate.
These are tire tracks. After the snowfall and in the morning light, they just happen to now look like hearts.
Adorable.
Almost as adorable as these guys.
There’s at least three more cats in there that are not visible in the photo.
Somehow, they got one corner of the hammock off its hook. I haven’t been able to put it back as it can only be reached through the ramp door, which has the box sheltering it. A box that’s currently stuck in place with packed snow and ice.
I took this when I did the second feeding. My darling daughter did the morning feeding for me. It was -27C/-16F at the time. I don’t know what the wind chill was, but when I checked later and we had warmed up to -20C/-4F, the wind chill was -34C/-29F Thankfully, by the time I did the second feeding, there was hardly any wind, so it was just really cold, instead of brutally cold. 😄
In other things, my mother was successfully transferred to the temporary long term care unit in the town she had her apartment in, last night. My brother called them this morning and talked to the nursing staff before talking to my mother. She got there shortly after 7pm in a taxi handivan – and no, we are not going to be charged for that. However, a bag that contained, among other things, my mother’s Pepto got forgotten in the van, and the staff were trying to track it down. The other TCU always uses the same taxi driver for these transfers, as he’s so good with the seniors, so it would be easy to track it down.
As for my mother, once he started talking to her, she started railing about how things were even worse here than where she had just left. It took a while to get to what she was saying, and it seems she was still just rattled from the transfer. She does have a room mate, but she did say that this person was better (by which we understand she means, this is not a person with dementia trying to tell my mother to go away while claiming my mother’s bed was hers).
My brother gave me the proper numbers to call this TCU, though he didn’t have the room number. I tried calling as soon as I could. It went to voice mail so I left a message, but no one got back to me. I texted the contact info to my sister, though. After several hours, I tried again and got through.
I talked to the nurse, first, and asked how things were going. She seemed a bit hesitant in answering, as if she was trying to find the right words. My mother wasn’t quite happy and something my mother told her had her thinking she had been in a single room before. I told her that she had been in a single room while at the hospital, but at the first TCU, she had a room mate. I explained about the roommate having some level of dementia and her behaviour. The nurse was surprised because, while they do have single rooms, those are usually reserved (if possible) for people with dementia that shouldn’t be sharing a room because they might do things like that. She would have expected this other TCU not to place someone with dementia with a room mate. I told her, I didn’t think they had any single rooms!
I remembered to ask about the missing bag.
It turns out my mother thought it was missing because it didn’t go to her room. It contained her medications, which they never keep in patients’ rooms, and was at the desk (they would have a secure lock up for meds). She was even able to tell me some of the items that were in it.
After talking with the nurse, I asked to talk to my mother and got transferred to their cordless phone.
It was a… strange call.
My mother seemed out of sorts, but she was happy to tell me that my sister had come to visit. She was extra happy, because my sister had brought her “cabbage” (sauerkraut) and pickle juice. My mother has been craving something “sharp” to counter what she described as all the sweet she’s been getting. I have no idea what she meant by that. Some of her meals might have a dessert, but that would be something along the lines of canned fruit. Whatever. She’s happy with her “sharp” snacks!
She asked me about the truck at one point and I explained to her that they weren’t able to look at it yesterday, but were hoping to do it today (I’ve still had no word about it, and they are closing soon). That set her off. She started saying how I should “explain to them” that we need the truck. I told her, they know our situation. Oh, but if I just explain to them. I told her, they have appointments. They have to fit the truck in, in between appointments, and need at least a couple of hours to look at where they think the problem is. I then started getting lectures about how other people’s appointments didn’t matter, they should take care of me. Then she started saying how my brother and I need to get together to find a “good mechanic”. Because mechanic always cheat women. When she started to invent accusatory things about how they were cheating me, I had to put an abrupt stop to it and pointed out she had no idea what she was talking about (in regards to the problems we’ve had with our truck), and she shouldn’t start going on like that. We should talk about something else.
After that, I had dead silence. Apparently, if she couldn’t complain about things, she had nothing else to say.
I remembered about the bag that she thought was missing, so I told her that it wasn’t missing. That it had medications in it, so it when to the nursing station, not her room, explaining that they have to lock up the medications.
She didn’t believe me.
She then gave me this description of her the transfer last night, looking into the bag and what she saw in it, how the bag was on the seat of the van and didn’t come in with her. It was still in the van. I told her, the nurse said she had it. Her medications were in the bag, so it had to go to the nursing station, not her room.
My mother didn’t believe they had her medications, either.
…
She would have gotten at least her bed time meds, and her morning meds, by the time I’d called her.
No matter what I said, she refused to believe me that the bag was not forgotten in the van, nor that they had her meds. She finally said she would go to the nursing station and ask them, herself.
There really wasn’t much else to talk about after that. She did say she was glad for the phone calls from me and my brother today. She calls the calls and visits her “second medicine.”
She may still be out of sorts, but where she is now is definitely better than where she was. She did complain a bit about the small size of the rooms (I don’t think she gets just how fortunate she was to have the big room in the hospital, all to herself!) and that she didn’t know the place yet. I brought up that she had told me she’d been there before, to visit people, so I thought she would be familiar with it.
No, she’s never been here before, she insisted.
…
She told this to me not long ago. Even made out like I was stupid, or that I thought she was stupid, to think she didn’t know about this place being in the town’s hospital. Told me how she knew people there and had visited them. Now she’s telling me the opposite?
When I said, she had told me she’d been there before, not that long ago, she just said, well, it’s a big place. So maybe she visited someone in a different ward? I dunno!
The good thing, though, is that she will start getting communion on Sundays from the church she used to go to, and they will likely be done by the same guy that had brought it to her after services at her apartment across the street.
So that’s where we are at with my mother’s transfer. Hopefully, she will settle in and be happier there. She did confirm that her transfer to the personal care home wasn’t cancelled. I said for sure it wasn’t; where she is now is all temporary. If all goes well, she will not be moved again until is to the specific nursing home she wants to be in.
How long that will be is anybody’s guess!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 