Thanks to the generous donations from the rescue, one of the things I’ve been able to do for the outside cats is to use the freeze dried cat food powder to make a thin cat soup. Not a lot, but enough to spread around several bowls, in hopes to lure the more feral cats closer to the house.
Sweetie has finally discovered this. For the past while, by the time she showed up to eat, the other cats would have eaten all the cat soup. They absolutely love the stuff. (Interestingly, the inside cats keep trying to get into the boxes, but once it’s mixed up, they have no interest.) I mixed up a bowl of cat soup then leave it to rehydrate while I put out the dry cat food. I actually spotted Sweetie this morning, already at one of the food bowls under the shrine, looking for food. She ran off a bit when I came out and put food into the bowls in the area.
Not only did she come back for the soup but, when other cats bullied their way in, she went into the isolation shelter and found the cat soup in there!
Not only that, but when she saw me stop to take a picture (using zoom; I was not going to go too close!), she went back to eating.
This is progress!
After doing the cat stuff, I did the rest of my rounds, including checking on the garden.
That’s when I spotted our first Gigantheum poppy was blooming!
Of course, I stopped to take a picture and immediately got photobombed.
By a bumble bee.
You can just barely see it in the first image. If you click through, there are two short videos, too.
I didn’t do the morning watering today. Partly because I was heading into town for a meeting at the nursing home, and partly because we were supposed to get thunderstorms this afternoon.
I got a message from my brother and SIL, letting me know they were on the way. My brother had to take a day off work for this. I ended up getting there about half an hour early, and met with my brother in the chapel to wait, as the meeting room was being used for another meeting. Their grandsons are still with them, so my SIL took them out around town and to the nearby beach.
The meeting is something that will be happening every year, though when they found out my brother took a day off work, they said future ones could be done over the phone.
Being the first one of these meetings, there was a fair bit to cover, as we gave them some background information that would explain some of my mother’s behavioural issues, etc. There was some discussion about my mother’s cognitive decline – something my mother notices in herself, even if she doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain it. One of the people looked through the binder of my mother’s files and found the past several cognitive test results. One she had done 2 years ago had a score of 14. One she had done this year had a score of 29.
Out of 30.
That is a huge fluctuation. It does match what we all have observed. In many ways, and on her good days, my mother is extremely sharp. On her bad days, she can’t understand some of the most basic stuff. What we have no way of knowing is, when she’ll be having a good day or a bad day!
The meeting went on for about half an hour. My plan had been to visit my mother, then do some grocery shopping. My brother had brought another radio for my mother (she was unusually cruel about the “junk”, high end radio he’d provided for her before, not understanding that it’s simply difficult for any radio to catch a frequency where she is) because she complained he’d taken her radio away.
…
He hadn’t planned to actually visit her, though, but when he called my SIL to let her know we were done, she said their grandsons wanted to visit their great grandmother, and they were already on their way.
So we all went to visit my mother, very briefly. She turned out to be in bed, asleep, when we got there and was very tired.
For a short visit, she managed to make digs and each of us. Not the boys, thankfully, but… yeah. She actually complained a bit that we were there, asking what the “celebration” was. My SIL explained that she was driving the boys back home tomorrow, so this was their last chance to see her for a while. I told her I was going the the grocery store and was visiting her first. We didn’t bother telling her about the meeting, as she would not have been able to grasp it. As it was, she never got up at all. Which was fine. Lunch was going to be brought over, soon, so we didn’t want to linger. As we were leaving, she twisted something in conversation into an accusation against my brother, then told him that she wanted him to come visit for longer… by himself… because she wanted to “talk” to him.
My poor brother. He practically ran from the room after saying his goodbyes.
From there, they invited me to join them for lunch so we could fill each other in and catch up on things. It also gave me a chance to see the boys for a bit longer before they left for home tomorrow.
After we parted ways, I did a small grocery shopping trip. Most of what I got was on sale, but it still came out to almost $130. I did finally get a decent amount of butter, though; it was on sale for under $5 a pound. At least the house brand butter was. With other brands, the half pound sizes cost more than that.
Oddly, by the time I was packing things up at the truck, I was hit with a wave of sleepiness that did not stop. I felt weary to the bone, and could barely stay upright.
What I got fit into three hard sided bags (I even remembered to grab some, since the back of the truck cab is filled with my market supplies) so I messaged home, asking if someone could meet me at the garage to grab one, so I wouldn’t have to pull up to the house or make two trips. Then I started driving, so I never saw what the response was.
I had also picked up an energy drink for the drive home.
It didn’t make any difference, that I could tell.
Much to my surprise, when I drove up to the garage, my husband was waiting for me! He’d gone over with just a cane, not his walker. When I asked him about it, he told my that our younger daughter had been up all night and had finally been able to fall asleep, and her sister has had a relapse and couldn’t walk to the garage.
!!!
We got everything in and I put it all away, and then went to bed. I pretty much passed out for a couple of hours, with the exception of when several cats decided they absolutely needed to use me as a bed.
I didn’t realize how hard I’d fallen asleep until the phone rang. When I answered, the person on the other end asked for my older daughter. From the tone of her voice, I knew immediately is was about her relapse. There was a distinct sense of urgency, almost alarm, in her tone. Talking to my daughter yesterday, she told me she intended to take the “use as needed” medication she has, and that they intended to phone the doctor at the women’s hospital today (her sister being the one to make sure she didn’t put it off again!).
In the end, she was told to go ahead and take the “as needed” medication again. The nurse that called was going to consult with the doctor about any changes in her prescriptions, and will hopefully call back tomorrow. My daughter has her pre-op appointment on the 17 and she was instructed to not worry about that at all and, if things get worse, get to an ER right away. For now, my daughter says it is manageable. When she filled me in on this later, I made sure to tell her that I will drive her to the ER, even if it’s 2am, if necessary.
After my much needed nap, I headed outside to take care of the cats, then stayed out to try and get as much of the lawn mowed as possible.
For all that I waited for things to dry out after the last rains, the grass in the more overgrown section of lawn I focused on was so wet, it actually clogged the riding mower ejector opening, several times!
Then it started raining.
*sigh*
At least I got the tallest grass done. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get more done tomorrow, because the day after is market day, and I don’t expect to have the energy to do it when we are done there. I’m doing the riding mower parts, though, so we’ll see.
Also, there are SO many frogs! Many times, I had to reduce my speed or stop outright to avoid running them over. This makes me very happy. More frogs means less slugs and other nasty bugs! They don’t do much about the mosquitoes, unfortunately, but we’ve had a lot of frogs for two summers now, and I haven’t seen a single slug in the garden! 😁
Meanwhile, I think it’s time to pain killer up and head back to bed. That wave of sleepiness is coming over me again. The only thing keeping it from getting as bad as earlier is my increasing pain levels.
*sigh*
Less than 2 weeks to my telephone appointment with my doctor.
Being broken really sucks.
Being broken and not knowing what’s going on makes it that much more frustrating!!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 