Wildlife out our window

Video Experiment

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For a while I thought we weren’t going to see any deer today.  Then we got 5 of them, all at once!  They got very active, with them attacking each other and chasing each other around, before things settled for a while.  It turned out to be Mama and the twins, plus two others I didn’t recognize.

I’ve been able to upload videos directly into posts from my phone, but I am quickly running out of space on my free WordPress account.  We’re not in a position to upgrade, so I’m going to try uploading a video onto YouTube (I just activated a new channel today), and embedding it into this post.  If it works, I will upload other videos that I’ve posted here, then switch the videos in the posts to embedded YouTube files.  I’ll then be able to delete the videos from here on WordPress and free up some space until we can afford to upgrade our plan.

So please do let me know in the comments if it plays properly for you on whatever you use to view this blog!

Many thanks. :-)

The Re-Farmer

New Deer… doing a double take!

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My younger daughter and I ended up going out most of the day, getting everything we needed for Easter, and to last us until the Tuesday after.  There is no way I’m doing the Costco shopping before Easter weekend.

Then we went out again to get the thing I thought I had, but didn’t…

My older daughter got some photos of a new pair of deer that visited our feeding station today.

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It looks like a Mama and her youngster.

There is, however, something strange about that Mama.

Take another look…

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She has no tail!

Now there is a deer that likely survived a predator attack!

We seem to be getting more new deer visiting us lately.

My daughter also got a cute shot of Butterscotch.

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Butterscotch has been quite entertaining today.  I got some very dramatic photos of her this morning, as well as a funny video, that I posted on my Instagram.  We saw all of the cats except The Hand and Mothman today – I think the warm temperatures are being quite enjoyed by them!  They were certainly more playful.

The Re-Farmer

 

Hello, Critters

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Ah, a much more pleasant day today!  Just the winds dying down makes a huge difference.  There are blizzard warnings for later on, but not in our area.  We’re just supposed to get a mix or rain and snow some time.

I’m still waiting for that last big blow-out before real spring (as opposed to calendar spring) arrives.

Interestingly, the better weather conditions did not translate into increased critter activity outside our window.

Nasty Crime Boy came to check out the birds.

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Later, we saw Beep Beep climbing one of the trees.  Rolando Moon came out to say hi when I brought the food out, and that was it for the outside cats.

As for the deer, we only saw Hungry Girl and Barbecue.  My being in the window taking pictures seemed to make Hungry Girl very nervous, so I didn’t stay for long.  I did get a couple of cute photos, though.  Including my obligatory tongue shots! :-D  I got both Hungry Girl…

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… and Barbecue…

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… just a peak of a tongue. :-D

It was a quiet day overall, which I’m quite enjoying.  Visits with my mother tend to require a few days of recovery time.  Seeing her every day for 5 days in a row?  I’m going to need at least a week to de-stress!  I did get a call from her today, and I was happy to learn she had booked an appointment with her local doctor for tomorrow – that was fast!  She didn’t get her brace on, though tomorrow she is hoping to talk to some staff about getting the assistance.  I don’t know how the process works in this province yet, but I’m hoping she will be able to get daily visits to put the brace on her, quickly.

I did get a quick trip into town to pick up some things for Easter that will need advance prep time, plus I got my van booked to get the safety done in a couple of days.  I really don’t know what to expect with that.  I’m hoping it’ll be inexpensive, but my paranoid side is thinking they’re going to find new, expensive problems in the process.  Because it just always seems to happen that way!  If all goes well, though, I’ll have the safety done in the morning, and by afternoon, I can get our registration and insurance transferred over.  Then I’ll finally be driving with this province’s license plates!  It’ll only be a month and a half past when it was supposed to get done. :-/

I just know it’s not going to be that simple.  There’s going to be something to complicate things, right?  :-D

I am so looking forward to this hassle being over and done with!

The Re-Farmer

A Good Day to Stay Inside!

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It was just a bit nippy out there! :-D

I posted a video, taken from the cat food area, on my Instagram showing some of the branches blown into our yard, though a few of them were there from a previous blustery day.  I took another video from the deer feeding area that I posted previously.

That was the only time any of us stepped outside today!

The wind actually managed to knock over some of the insulating foam we’ve got around the base of our house.

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I can see the one bin being blown over, as it was empty, but the other had stuff in it to weigh it down.  Plus, there were bricks holding up the foam.

It was the only area I had to fix, though.

I was holding the containers of deer feed when I took this photo.  You see those seeds on the bin and the step below it?  That was blown out from them, in just the few seconds it took me to get out my phone and take the photo!

I ended up not having to refill the cats’ food at all; I just got some of the snow out of what was already there, then refilled their water.  Only Rolando Moon braved the winds to say hello, and take a few bites…

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… and give my finger a gentle chomp, immediately after this shot was taken! :-D

The deer feeding area had only quick visits with deer, including one I didn’t recognize that came by, but didn’t go near the feed.  The area is just too exposed to the wind, I think, and they were very skittish.

I first saw what I thought was Barbecue, running away from the feed, across the garden area.  I’m pretty sure I saw Hungry Girl already ahead of him.

It turned out they were chased off, by two more deer I’ve never seen before!

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This one dared come to the feed for only a few quick mouthfuls.  I noticed the mark on its neck and, once the photos were uploaded, confirmed that it was indeed a scar.

It looks like there are antler buds on this one, too.

The other deer didn’t even get that close…

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This second one started towards the house, but only a bit.  Then they both ran off.

It wasn’t until I uploaded the photo that I saw the red mark on its inner leg.  It looks like a fairly fresh wound.

This one also seems to have antler buds starting to show.

Happily, Hungry Girl and Barbecue did come back later, but only for quick visits.  The area, however, was just full of redpolls, today, in spite of the winds!  Those little guys sure do move quick!

We humans, on the other hand, stayed warm inside.  Normally, we would have gone to church for Palm Sunday, but if it’s this windy by our house, the roads would be far worse.  Instead, my daughters baked some more bread, since we were going through the last batch so quickly.  I started a list of what we’ll need for our Easter baskets and prepared some recipes.  The girls requested I bake a special bread I used to do regularly, when opportunity allowed.  It’s very similar to challah, and I enjoy making pretty shapes with it for our basket.

Our Easter basket is based on the traditional Polish Easter baskets of my family’s tradition, which means it will be full of symbolic foods, plus a few token chocolates, if we happen to pick them up.  The bread is the centerpiece, and of course, there are lots of eggs.  We make sure to have both peeled and unpeeled eggs (no unnecessary work is to be done on Easter Sunday, including peeling eggs, if it can be avoided).  One very non-traditional way of doing eggs we’ve decided to do again is pink pickled eggs.  Those require 2-3 days to pickle in, among other things, beet juice. Sometimes we like to do herb and olive oil marinated goat cheese, but those need about a week to marinade, so it’s too late to do that this year.  The basket will also include ham, kielbasa, butter, cheese, salt, horseradish (we’ll be buying that in a jar, this year) and a few other things.

I had asked my mother again about the horseradish growing here, and this time she told me where she’d last transplanted them.

Under the spruce tree, next to the house.

I tried to get her to be more precise as to which spruce tree she meant, since there are quite a few by the house, but I never did get a clear answer.  She seemed to assume I would know exactly which tree she meant! :-D

Ah, well.  We’ll see where it comes up and will know for next year!

We make sure to have the basket ready by the end of Good Friday, so it can be assembled and taken for blessing on Saturday.  The contents are then used for our Easter brunch.  It’s one of our favorite traditions, and I’m really looking forward to it.

This tradition is huge in Polish culture (shared in Ukrainian culture, too).  I recall when our Polish priest had to finally retire for health reasons, and we got a new and younger priest that was…  I don’t know, actually.  Just “not Polish.”  :-D  When Easter came around, he announced that there would be no blessing of the baskets.  I don’t remember the exact explanation, but basically, it wasn’t “Catholic”, so it wasn’t going to be done.

Boy, did he have a revolt on his hands!

By the time the uproar was done, he was doing the basket blessings.

That priest didn’t last long.  He was a very bitter man.  I don’t know how he was ever ordained in the first place.

As far as I know, no priest assigned to this parish has ever tried to end the tradition of blessing of the baskets!

The Re-Farmer

Quiet – and critters

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Oh, how I’ve learned to appreciate quiet, boring days.

Not that today turned out to be either quiet, or boring – but it was close enough!

The temperatures dipped a bit today, but the windchill made it feel so much colder.  I was glad not to be going out, that’s for sure!  It was still pretty mild in our area.  In other areas South-West of us, I heard they were closing down the highways in some areas.

Though I was looking forward to sleeping in today – and even stayed up much later last night as well – it seems my brain had other ideas.  I ended up waking up at about the same time as I have been for the past week!  Ah, well.  It could be worse; my husband is up even earlier, every day, because it’s just too painful to be lying down.  That’s the crazy thing about back injuries.  There is no position you can stay in for any length of time before the pain forces you to shift.  So there’s that cycle of getting up, sitting down, getting up, lying down, over and over again.

My older brother was going to drive my mother to the hospital today, had she needed to go.  Since she didn’t, he just had a visit with her, instead.  It’s quite a drive for him to come out here, so that was really nice of him.  He even texted me a photo of her eye, though it didn’t come in for almost 3 hours!  Ah, the joy of cell phone dead zones.

My mother’s eye is noticeably better today; amazing how quickly it’s recovering now that she’s off that one medication.  The new medication is considered a blood thinner, too, but it doesn’t lead to bleeding the way the other one did.  She even let my brother put the brace on her leg, too!  That is such a wonderful step for her.  Now I just hope she’ll be able to get home care to help her get it on.  Theoretically, she can do it herself, but it would be very difficult to get all those straps tightened on her own without the brace shifting out of position, and it’s really important to have that knob properly aligned.

After seeing my mother, my brother came over to our place and we had a nice visit.  Plus, we checked out the door on my van.  The door that he worked so hard to replace has started to drop again when I open it.  *sigh*  It isn’t much, but after what happened previously, I’m a little paranoid about it.  We tightened the hinges again and it’s better, but it looks like it’ll be something that will need to be continually monitored.

One of the things he and I have been talking about was setting up security cameras.  I had been thinking around the house (more to capture the visiting wildlife… :-D ), but he was looking to put one above the garage door, too.  It’s the perfect spot to cover anyone coming in and out of our driveway.  So while we were still in the garage, he closed the door from the inside to look at where the cables would be coming in from a camera mounted outside.  Over there, he points out to me.  You see where that wasps’ nest is?

!!!!!

Turns out we have a fairly large wasp nest inside the peak of the roof, against the garage wall, plus there’s a row of 3 more new nests, just a couple of inches long, and what looks like the remains of other beginning nests.  It was fairly dark (since we don’t have the electricity to turn on the lights, thanks to our movers), so I couldn’t quite make out all of them.

We’d never seen them before because any time we go in the garage, it’s through the main door, which hides them when it’s open.

My husband is allergic to stings.

Those are going to have to disappear.  Preferably before it warms up enough for them to come out of hibernation.

So I’m doubly glad my brother came over!

He didn’t stay too much longer, though, as he was concerned about road conditions, but he still took the time to check out the barn, which also needs to have power restored to it again.  When we get our power pole by the garage replaced and electricity restored there, he’s arranging for the barn to get hooked up again, too.  At some point, we’ll look at restoring the water, too.  When we got running water in the house, with a new well dug in the yard, a trench had been dug towards the barn.  The pipes for the septic field, as well as for water to the barn, were installed all at the same time.  Along with a water pump in the barn, two heated water fountains had been installed for the cows, so they would always have water, even in the coldest of weather.  When, how or where all this got shut down, we don’t know, so there’s going to be some sleuthing to do before any of that is restored.

Add that to the list of things that needs to be worked on, now that we’re living here.

It’s a long list.

In the afternoon, my lovely daughters did some more bread baking, giving me a chance to catch up on my crochet.  With the blustery weather, we weren’t seeing a lot of activity at the feeding station, and what activity we did get was very quick!  I managed to get a cute bluejay photo…

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I love how they tilt their heads like that.

Hungry Girl and Barbecue came over as well.  They dashed in quickly, and seemed very antsy – probably eager to eat and then find some shelter from the wind! – so I didn’t try to take very many photos.  Seeing me in the window seemed to make them more nervous, and I didn’t want to startle them away from the food.

I did manage to get a very pretty profile picture of Hungry Girl.

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In going through my folders of photos, I’ve got quite a lot of photos like this; the deer frequently look behind the house while feeding, so many images are of them in this pose.  I never tire of seeing, them, though.  They’re so lovely!

Ah, but of course, I got some fun pictures, too!  This time, it was Barbecue to was sticking his tongue out (though from the lack of antler buds starting to show, I’m thinking he might actually be a she!).

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This one had me laughing out loud, but I think the next one is some kind of record…

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I think that’s the most tongue ever, in any of the shots I’ve managed to get over these months! :-D

They didn’t stay for much longer after this.

Tomorrow we’re technically supposed to warm up a bit, but the wind is supposed to increase, with more snow.  How much of that will reach us, we shall see, but it’s still going to be another chilly one.

Oh, how I’ve already been spoiled by the calm, warm days we’ve had for the past week.

I think I’ll go through those seed catalogs I got in the mail and dream of warmth and green, growing things.

The Re-Farmer

They’re Back!

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As I am uploading this, they are still outside my window, though it is getting hard to see them in the increasing darkness.

Look closely in the trees, behind the stone cross, and you can see Hungry Girl.

One of the twins is showing antler nubs!

The Re-Farmer

I can rest now… and critter pictures

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Good news; today was the last day my mother had to go to the hospital for injections!

But first, here are a couple of critter pictures from the DSLR, yesterday.  I didn’t upload them until today.  There were very few, but a couple I really enjoyed, that I hope you enjoy, too!

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Yes, I am an immature child that loves to catch the deer with goofy faces.  :-D

I tried to snag a picture of a squirrel posing so perfectly on top of the limestone cross.

I didn’t quite manage it, but I think I like this better…

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This morning’s trip with my mom to the hospital took a lot longer, for good reasons, and she was having one of her good days, so it was much more pleasant, too!  When I got to her place, she was ready and waiting for me to put the brace on her leg, which was awesome.  She did comment on how the bump on the inside (a knob with a dial that applies pressure to her knee, to straighten it) gets in the way of her other leg, so she has to walk with her legs farther apart.  My response was good!  That’s what it’s supposed to do!

Well.  At least until her knee starts to straighten out.  The dial will need to be checked and adjusted after a while – if she keeps up wearing it!

We had a pleasant drive to the next town, with beautiful views of frost covered trees glistening in the sunlight.  She did comment again about how ridiculous it is to drive so far, every day, just for an injection.  While I understand why it’s being done, and I think she kind of does, too, she had a point.  So when we got there (this time, I gave in and used my husband’s disability placard so we could park closer to the door; the distance she had to walk yesterday was really hard on her!) and I let them know she was there, I also asked if someone was available to check on her eye and see about getting the prescription to replace the injections.  After explaining the situation to the nurse, she was more than willing to see what she could do about it.

Later, the same nurse brought the blood pressure machine to the waiting room for my mother and took her vitals.  She looked at my mom’s eye, but this was the first time she’d seen it.  Thankfully, I’d taken a picture of it a couple of days ago, which helped.  She had us go to an examination room (all of this is being done in the emergency section of the hospital) for a bit more privacy for the injection, then she had us go back to the waiting room while she got the on-call doctor.  The one that has seen my mother before was not in, so we had no idea who it would be.

I think we waited less than 15 minutes, in total.  The doctor came over and took my mom back to the examination room.  He had lots of questions, trying to figure out why my mom was on the first blood thinners at all, and why she was now getting these injections.  Had she had heart surgery?  Valves replaced?  Nope.  We explained as best we could. Then he left, and we could hear him consulting someone on the phone nearby.  A few minutes later, he was back with a few more questions, then off to consult again.

I must admit, my mother showed tremendous restraint from her usual behaviour.  Not only did we once again have a non-white doctor – Middle Eastern, no less! – with a strong accent, but one that was dressed VERY casually (I once got a long story from her that culminated in her concluding that because doctors and nurses don’t wear white uniforms anymore, it means hospitals are dirty, and that’s why we have viruses…).  However, it was a male doctor, and he asked her lots of questions, looked at her eye and listened to her heart.  The expressions on her face were very conflicted!

One thing I did notice happen a lot today; more so than other days – while talking to my mother, more and more, people would turn and start talking to me, instead.  Now, I can help by explaining things that are harder for her to explain, due to her limited English medical vocabulary, but don’t ask me what her symptoms are or how she’s feeling!  She’s sitting right there.  She may have trouble expressing herself in English sometimes, and takes a while to get to the point, but she’s not senile.  She’s not deaf, either.

I’m reminded of a time I accompanied a friend to a medical clinic.  She is a wheelchair user and drives an adapted van; she just needed someone with her for a bit of assistance.  When we got to the clinic, the person behind the counter looked right past my friend and started asking me the questions.  Hullo!  Just because she’s in a wheelchair, that doen’t mean she doesn’t understand her own care needs!  I’m just along for the ride!

Though I do have to give the people at the hospital some slack, after seeing some of the inpatients they are caring for, several of whom are younger than my mother.  It may just be what they are most used to.

The end result was, my mother got her new prescription!  No more trips for injections.

I’m looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow!

We took advantage of the situation and I helped her do some grocery shopping, and she took me out for tea at a lovely little café.  Then it was off to her home town to get her new prescription, though they could only give her a few days’ worth.  She’ll have to come back next week to get the rest.  She can do that herself, using her walker, if she has to.

I have been talking to her about getting home care to help put her brace on in the mornings.  I hope she’ll be able to get that arranged quickly.

Meanwhile, my older brother will be visiting her tomorrow morning, so he’ll be able to help her put the brace on.

We’ll still have to keep tabs on her and that eye; it’s better, but after I took another picture and showed it to her, she even commented that it still looks pretty bad!  The good thing is that there is no pain, nor is her vision affected.

Phew.

By the time it was all done, it was almost 5 hours before I got home – scaring a deer away from the house in the process!  It came back, though…

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At least I’m guessing it was Hungry Girl that had run off.  She’s been coming over by herself more often.

Excuse me while I giggle happily at her silly tongue face.  I got several of them, but that one is the best!

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This one looks like she’s having a conversation.

I also got a good shot of a male redpoll today…

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Pretty little thing!

Meanwhile, I got other good news.

First off, I got the mail before coming home and WE HAVE OUR NEW HEALTH CARE CARDS!!!!  WHOOT!!! Finally!

Or, to be more precise, my husband has two health care cards, and my name happens to be on the second half of both, along with his.

Apparently, husbands and wives still don’t rate individual cards in this province, but wives are added to the list on the second half, like dependent minors.  So he and I have identical cards, with his name and address on the first half, and both our names and individual numbers on the second half.

They still needed me to send them a copy of my marriage certificate to use my married name, though.

Arglebargle.

Whatever.   At least we have them now!

Then I got a phone call from our insurance company, letting me know that the problem with my coverage has finally been fixed!  It took them a while to track it down, since everywhere else in their system, it showed me as being covered.  It was now done, she told me, and I should have no problem!

Conveniently, my husband had phoned in some prescription refills of his own, so I headed into town to pick those up, and had the pharmacy get my insurance checked out, too.  Sure enough, it was all fixed!  So I got my own prescription refilled, too.  Just one, though.  After seeing my new doctor and going over the results of my blood work, it was decided to go with just one right now, and see how it goes.  My goal is to be off that one, too, though the doctor seems dead set on me being on it for the rest of my life, along with statins.

Not if I can help it!

*sigh*

I feel a wonderful sense of relief today.

I look forward to being home tomorrow. :-D

The Re-Farmer

 

 

New Deer!

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I am just so excited!

My family saw Hungry Girl and Barbecue this morning, while I was out (then in, then out, then in again – one of these days I WILL remember that the store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays), so I was happy just to see any other action outside.

Like Nasty Crime Boy, all settled in under the dead spruce tree.

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Then Hungry Girl came back.  She kept looking at the house, below the window; that turned out to be more cats! :-D  She stuck around for only a little while.

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Long enough that I did get my obligatory tongue shot! :-D

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Hungry Girl wandered off nonchalantly enough, though later on a flash caught my eye and I looked up just in time to see a deer go bounding through the space between the spruce grove and the row of apple trees.

Then, some time later, I saw three deer coming over and initially thought it was Mama and the twins, but then I saw this guy…

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This deer is much bigger and bulkier than any other I’ve seen visiting!  And check out those distinctive markings on the snout.

A new deer!  Cool!  Then I saw there were still 3 deer coming, so it must be Mama and the twins, right?

Nope!

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These two started to make their way closer, and were pretty nervous about the whole thing.

I had to tilt my tripod over to get a shot of the fourth deer…

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She stayed farther out the whole time.  The others were more daring.

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One of the younger pair crept closer in to check out Eunice, the Barely Upright Snowman.

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These are some weird looking deer.  Especially the big one.

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The one deer in the back never came closer and she and the younger ones ran off, but one of the younger ones came back.

The big guy was a lot more laid back about the whole thing, even while being obviously cautious.

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We immediately started calling this younger one Nubbins, because of the antler nubbins starting to show.

I had been wondering when we would start seeing signs of antlers!

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I can’t get over the very distinct face on this one.  I have no way of knowing right now, but I get a sense that this is quite an old deer.

I hope they come back!

We’re just tickled pink to have FOUR new deer visiting us!

The Re-Farmer

Critter Stress Relief

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Oh, what a long day it’s been!

Wait… what do you mean it’s not even 6pm yet?

:-D

Actually, it wasn’t that bad.  Just longer than expected.

Before heading out to drive my mom to the doctor, I was able to get a few quick pictures – though the camera wanted to focus on everything but the cat…

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This is the tree Butterscotch got stuck in a while back.  It’s almost like she’s going “I can do it… just watch me…” :-D

I left earlier so I could help my mom to put on her knee brace.  I got there and even pulled up to the exit nearest her apartment – only to have her calling me from the main doors.  Yup.  She was out early, ready and waiting.  I mentioned the brace, but no, it’s okay, she says, as she climbs into my van.

My mom is tiny.  My van is not.  It’s a bit of an effort for her!

The drive in was… illuminating… as my mother expressed her discomfort about being taken off the blood thinners for her heart.  I had to explain that the injections were another kind of blood thinner, but something that wouldn’t make her bleed.  But she was still uncomfortable with the change.  Ultimately, though, she did say it out loud; her discomfort was a matter of racism on her part – though phrased to show she believed the change in her medication was due to racism on the doctor’s part.

That didn’t go over well with me.

While certainly not the worst of conversations with my mother, it definitely had some moments.

At least this time, she didn’t basically accuse me of worshiping frogs.  I have decorations on my dash, including scrapbooking adhesive beads, sea turtles, tortoises, a rock fish – in my previous vehicle, I had a much more elaborate display, but the surface is different in this vehicle, and they don’t stick as well.  I also have 1 frog on the dash (I had more, but they fell off) and 1 toad, in my dash, next to the gauges.  I did this because I was spending so much time driving around and waiting in the van, I made it into my happy place.  At Christmas, I even had a tiny Christmas tree with battery operated lights.

My mom just saw the frog, and I guess to her, what I was doing was like when people put little religious statues on their dashes; so it meant that if I had it on the dash, it was because I worshiped it.

But not the turtles.  Just the frog.

She doesn’t like frogs.

After we got to the hospital, we found out where they told us to go was not where we needed to go.  It was all within feet of each other, at least, and the right people were informed that my mom was there for her injection.  We didn’t actually wait for long before a nurse came and took her into a consultation room, along with the blood pressure machine, took her vitals then prepped for the injection.  After some questioning of the nurse about the doctor and so on (my mother is pretty good at hiding her racist motives behind these questions), she had to be told again that the injection was another kind of blood thinner, so her heart was still being treated.  She asked about having the treatments transferred to the hospital closer to her, and the nurse said she would look into it, and directed us back to the waiting room.

If it hadn’t been for that, we would have been able to leave right away.  As it was, because the doctor was in clinic, seeing other people, it took a while.

My mother was remarkably patient, though, even when the not-quite-there lady came back wanting to watch her show, which wasn’t going to start for another 20 minutes, and kept asking us if we watched it, did we know what channel it was on, and where were we from?

When the show did start, she fell asleep.

Altogether, we waited for probably 1 1/2 hours.  Eventually, the noise of the TV was too much for my mother, so we moved to a table outside the waiting room that’s reserved for inpatients.  Which turned out to be a good thing, because the doctor happened by, recognized us, and came to check on my mom, right then and there.

Which also gave us the opportunity to clarify about the medications and the requested transfer.  The doctor wants my mom to keep coming back, rather than transfer to the closer hospital, so that the same people will keep monitoring her eye.

I’m good with driving her.

My mom was pretty tired by then, though, and glad to finally leave.  She’s not happy with the situation – especially after I told her that it’s likely she’ll need to come back until the end of the week, before her eye clears.  I don’t think she’s getting that this is just her first day of getting the injection instead of her pill, and it’s going to take a while.

I am so glad I have been able to come with her for these.  Before going home, she needed to get some prescription refills, and she completely misunderstood the doctor, thinking that ALL her prescriptions were being changed, not just the blood thinners, and so on.  Though I explained various things to her, she kept having to get them explained again by others.

It got very exhausting.  For both of us!

But I was able to help her get some grocery shopping, too, and carry them in for her.  By the time she got home, she looked more than ready for a nap!  I do hope she got one.

Tomorrow should, hopefully, just be a quick trip in for her injection, then home again.

And this time, I hope to get that brace on her leg!

It was good to get home.  My daughters were in the process of baking more bread, and taking care of the critters.  Even got some photos for me.

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Mama and the twins had come by, and were very active about it!

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While Nasty Crime Boy was very interested in something going on above Eunice, the Barely Upright Snowman.

As for me, it’s all I can do not to go for a nap right now. :-D

The Re-Farmer

 

In for a penny, in for a pound.

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This morning, I headed over to my mother’s place to drive her to the hospital to follow up on her blood filled eye.

Unfortunately, she continued to take the blood thinners, which she takes for her heart, that she was told to stop taking, because she said she felt really bad without them.

Once at the hospital, we got passed around from place to place; turns out that the hospital, clinic and lab are all in different areas of the same building.

Very long story short, the blood thinners are why her eye is the way it is; she may have scratched it herself, or just rubbed it really hard – she mentioned that the day before she’d gone into the hospital with my sister, her eye was really, really itchy, and she’d rubbed it hard because of that.  !!

The doctor that saw her decided to put her on a different heart medication that will involve injections, in place of the current blood thinner she is taking.  Thankfully, just before we was given the injection, I mentioned that she’d taken her regular meds this morning, and would that be a problem?

The nurse double checked, and yes, it would be!

So she will get her first injection tomorrow, and will continue to get them daily, until her eye clears.

Which means I’ll be driving her to the hospital every morning for probably the rest of the week.

In for a penny, in for a pound!  Taking on some of the driving of my mother to medical appointments was one of the things I intended to help with, after all!

Good thing my own schedule is clear.  And that I’ve got two handy daughters to help out their dad while I’m away.

Overall, the trip was good. My mother used a cane today, instead of her walker.  It doesn’t fold up, like my husband’s does, but I have plenty of room in the back of the van for it.  Ah, well.  At one point, I had gone ahead to open up the door for her, then watched her as she walked over.  This was the first time I’ve had a clear view of her leg that’s bothering her while she was walking for any distance.  Her knee is bent inwards quite severely!  She was largely walking on the inside of her foot.  I’ve offered to come earlier tomorrow morning to help her put on the brace she’s supposed to be wearing.  She agreed, which is a huge step forward.

Even with all the reroutes (including more blood work), we didn’t spent much time in the waiting rooms, and we were out in about 1 1/2 hours.  We had passed a restaurant on the way in, and she offered to take me to lunch there, but they weren’t open yet, so we ended up going back to her hometown and she took me out for lunch there, then I got her home.  She was pretty tired by then.

Tomorrow should be much shorter, at least.

Meanwhile, the girls did bread baking while I was away; they’ve been doing the basic sourdough recipe so regularly now, they don’t even need to bring out the cookbook anymore. :-D  They’re thinking of doing more tomorrow, except using The Rye of SourOn instead of Sir Sour Alot.

I showed them the pictures I was able to get of the deer I saw on the way home.  They told me Hungry Girl and Barbecue had come by while I was gone, both of which came back while I was uploading my phone pictures onto my Instagram.

I am thinking I might want to bring the DSLR with me tomorrow, just in case… :-D

I didn’t get a lot of pictures of Hungry Girl and Barbecue today, but here are a couple of Hungry Girl for you to enjoy.

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This one really stood out for me, when I saw that big, beautiful eye!

And then I saw this next one, and it made me laugh out loud.

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Oh, how I love the goofy face pictures! :-D

The Re-Farmer