First, the good stuff.
My husband’s condition has stabilized, and he is feeling so much better. He’s looking a lot better, too – though some of that is partly because, with the heat we’ve been having, he finally shaved his head and most of his beard off, a few days ago. Today, however, was a much cooler day; more like our typical summer heat.
We had predictions of rain and possible thunderstorms for the afternoon, so I did not water the garden this morning. I did end up adding more rods to the hoops over the bush beans on the high raised bed. The onions planted with them were starting to poke through the netting. It’s now as high as the netting can go and still be secured around the edges. No sign of beans, though. Lots of flowers, but I’m not seeing a lot of pollinators. I’ve pretty much only seen bees on the poppy flowers. Nothing in the flower beds. With our spring lurching from hot during the day to almost freezing at night, that would have affected a lot of our emerging pollinators.
Our corn started to show tassels a few days ago. Today, I saw my first corn silk. Those, at least, get pollinated by the wind. In the next image of the slide show above, you can see the sudden burst of poppy flowers that opened this morning. In the last photo, we have two yellow zucchini flowers open – both female. No sign of male flowers.
While doing my rounds this morning, I also finally had a kitten sighting, enough to take pictures! I hadn’t seen the kitten in so long, I feared a coyote got it, but then I spotted it in the junk pile. The pile that has since had stuff removed from to the bin (which got taken away today), and other stuff sorted for other types of disposal. That area is going to be disturbed quite a bit before it’s all finally cleared away by winter but, for now, it’s still the place they can hide in! I am happy that Sprout is bringing her baby to the food bowls. We now have a chance to socialize it.
These are not the best pictures, since I had to zoom in so much. I didn’t want to scare them away before the kitten had a chance to get to the food bowls!
Later in the morning, I headed out to town, with a stop to visit my mother before I ran errands.
*sigh*
Before visiting her, I stopped at the nursing station to ask about the swelling in her legs. It’s not at a stage they are concerned about, so I asked if there was anything else. She told me my mother was being mean to people more often. It turns out she’s been going into the hallway, sitting there and mocking the guy in the room across the hall from her. They’ve had to have talks with her about her behaviour.
*sigh*
Then there was the visit itself.
I barely made 40 minutes before I had to leave.
When I asked how she was doing, she was feeling terrible, then started talking about how the staff is neglecting her because they want her to die. They want the old people to die, because there’s so many of them and they want to open up the rooms.
Then my mother brought up our vandal’s funeral, asking me what I thought of it. She has asked me this before, but I don’t think she remembered. Before I could say much, she started telling me how proud she was of him, how he had done so well for himself, etc. All I could do was stare at her as she spoke. I had no clue what she was talking about. Then she mentioned how SO many people were at the funeral. That’s when I clued in that she was rewriting her mind to make him out to be some sort of saint, instead of the person who stole from her, verbally abused her, squeezed many thousands of dollars from her over the years, demanded she pay for things he wanted for himself, vandalized things after we moved here, stalked and harassed us, left the most awful messages on her answering machine, continued to verbally abuse her and, the last time she saw him, he got up out of his wheelchair and walked out after she refused to pay for his funeral, which he’d already told her weeks before he’d taken care of. She saw lots of people at the funeral, and people said nice things under his obituary that my sister printed out and put into a binder for her, so now all the stuff he did no longer matters. She mentioned one comment in particular that I looked up, that included a story about horses. I told her that, when we moved here, he had two horses, but one disappeared. I later found out what had happened to it, and it was basically injured due to neglect and had to be put down. Mentioned that to her, and reminded her of how abusive he was towards dogs.
She changed the subject.
There was no way that I could tell her about the stuff going on around here. Especially the health related stuff, which meant I didn’t have much to talk about with her. So I tried showing her garden pictures, and photos of some of the maintenance stuff I was doing. During the conversation, it also came up that her lunch would soon be delivered, and I mentioned I wouldn’t stay to watch her eat (she wanted me to stay and watch her eat), and I’d be going to the grocery store then going home to have my own lunch, before the storm hit.
*sigh*
Every time I said anything, or tried to describe things I was doing to maintain the property, she somehow twisted it around. She was upset because I used the word “kill” when telling her I got rid of the vines that were killing trees and bushes. She accused me of talking only about “bad things” and complaining, when I was trying to describe how I was fixing things and making them better. She got upset because I was doing things she didn’t understand (she thought I had pulled up the grape vines for some reason), using words she didn’t like, and thinking about other things besides her.
Literally.
She got upset when I told her I was going to the grocery store, because I should only be thinking about her and visiting with her.
It got to the point where I finally said, that’s it. It’s time for me to go. She said no, she wanted my company. I pointed out that no, she did not want my company. She doesn’t enjoy my company. She doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like what I say, she doesn’t like what I do. It was time for me to go. As I walked out the door, I heard her staring her “remember your mama!” line that she uses so often, when she tries to guilt us about how when she’s gone, we will “remember your mama”, so we should go whatever she wants now.
*sigh*
From there, I did get my grocery trip done, focusing on stuff my husband requested. While I was driving home, I heard a notification from my phone and somehow knew exactly what the message was. When I got to the highway we cross before the gravel roads, I was not at all surprised to see a big truck coming up. Sure enough, it was the truck hauling away the bin of garbage – and the notification was my husband letting me know it was picked up! 😄 Talk about timing!
After I was home for a while, however, things started getting painful again, so I had to take some painkillers and lie down for a couple of hours. It did get interrupted by a phone call from my daughter, from her doctor’s office about her upcoming surgery. Then I got a call from the tree company.
Twice.
The first was to let me know they should be able to come by later this week, which is great news. The second was to let me know they’ll be able to come out tomorrow afternoon!
That tree in front of the kitchen will finally get taken down. No more big heavy branches over the roof! They’ll also take down a dead spruce that is tall enough that, if it fell, it could also hit the roof.
I still had my phone appointment with my doctor at 4:15, though I knew it might be a while before he got to me. She’s just back from vacation and would have a lot of other phone appointments to catch up on, too. It was closer to 6:30 when the call finally came in.
The first thing she wanted me to do was tell her exactly what was going on with me, and so she could connect it to the ultrasound results and figure out the next steps. Two of the ultrasounds came back normal, but one was not what it should be for a woman my age. I’m going to get a referral to a specialist and will get a biopsy, and then she gave me a prescription. I found all this quite hilarious, because so much of it is matching my daughter – we’re even on the same prescription now. The causes are different, but the symptoms and current treatment are the same. Even my daughter, on finding out the details, thought it would be hilarious if we ended getting “bulk surgeries”.
Yes, we joke about stuff like this.
Oh, I did ask and the doctor told me there was no sign of any cysts. I’m actually a bit surprised by that, since I am prone to them, but it was good news.
Meanwhile, this afternoon, we did get a very brief, very heavy deluge and thunderstorm pass through. After today, things should be both cooler – meaning average temperatures for this time of year – and no rain. I should finally be able to catch up on things outside. I should finally be able to get the electric chainsaw out and take care of that last big piece of tree that’s still lying in the middle of the west yard and cut that up for fire wood for the fire pit. Maple will make for great cooking fires. I also need to get the push mower into the maple grove. The Creeping Bellflower is taking over and starting to bloom, and that’s the last thing we need! That stuff is just as bad as Creeping Charlie.
I am so looking forward to when the tree guys get here. It will be such a relief to have those to trees down! Every time we have high winds, we half expect pieces of tree to fall on the roof.
The yard cats are not going to like it. They won’t be able to get onto the roof and peek through the upstairs windows anymore! 😄
So this has turned out to be a much more hectic day than expected, but at least most of it was good news. Yes, I consider the doctor’s call good news, too.
I’m quite looking forward to tomorrow.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 