We have cat food again!

October 23, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Would you look at these happy critters?

This was taken in the late afternoon. This morning, they did get the food I used the slow cooker to make for them overnight. They dug right in!

Unlike the inside cats. They turned their noses up and their cooked food! Even when the girls gave them some of the canned cat food we still had, putting it right on top of the food cooked for them, they ate around the cooked food, but left the canned cat food that was on top of their cooked meal.

So I gave the rest of it to the outside cats, after feeding them with kibble, and they dove right into that, too!

Our inside cats have gotten fussy!

Yes, I was able to get cat food today – and we even have a vehicle now!

A pretty good day

October 18, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I didn’t get as much done today as I’d hoped, but I got the important stuff done, and that’s what matters.

As usual, my day started with feeding the outside cats before doing my morning rounds. Since I was going to be helping my mother with errands today, my rounds included making sure things were set up in the truck for the day. By the time I was done my rounds, the cats had polished off all the warm, softened kibble they now get in the mornings, and were starting to settle into their cuddle puddles!

Like this one, near the heat lamp. Not directly under it – I expect to see more of that when things get really cold! – but close.

There is one adult cat in this pile.

That old feed bag, which is stuffed with packing material, had been on the nearby shelf for them to use as a bed while looking out the window, but it kept getting knocked down, so we’ve just left it. They quite like it there. Underneath is mostly bare concrete.

Since my mother was getting her Meals on Wheels delivery today, I didn’t have to leave as early as I usually do, and had my own lunch early.

I still got there early enough for us to have a bit of a visit before her Meals on Wheels was delivered. As we were talking, she showed me this.

If you click through to the next image, you’ll see the other side.

My mother had been going through her things, trying to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep, when she found it.

She told me that when she was in the hospital, in labour with me, there was a nun who visited and prayed with her. After I was born and my mother was ready to go home, she held me while my mother got into the car, then put me in her arms.

No car seats, or even seat belts, back then! 😄

This nun had also given my mother this… Hmmm… I don’t know what it’s called. Not a medallion, of course, but a laminated paper version of a medallion.

Now, she wanted me to have it!

I gratefully accepted it. What a connection to my own birth! I now have it in my wallet, under one of the plastic windows, so I can see it. I’m amazed she managed to hang on to something so small, all these decades!

Soon after, my mother’s Meals on Wheels arrived. She is so very happy with these meals. Today, it was salmon with mushroom rice, cooked broccoli with other vegetables I couldn’t make out, and cream of potato soup. There was a packet of tartar sauce for the salmon and soy sauce for the rice. For desert, there was a cube of bright green Jello, with what I think was pineapple in it. She quite enthusiastically enjoyed her meal!

After she was done and we were having tea together, I asked about her shopping list and got a bit of a surprise.

She didn’t need a grocery shopping trip anymore.

Yesterday was a nice day, and she decided to go ahead an walk to the grocery store. It’s just a couple of blocks, but she insists on taking the “short cut” through the empty lot – almost a field – between her building and the street the grocery store is on. I just shake my head that she insists on doing this, because it’s “shorter”. For starters, it’s not level and doesn’t get mowed regularly, so it would be rough to go over with her walker. She would also have to go around some fences and a building to get to it. In reality, the “shorter” path probably isn’t saving her anything. My concern is that it increases her chances of falling, but she insists that her “helper” (her walker) will prevent that.

Plus, it’s trespassing, but I don’t think anyone cares. As I understand it, the owner lives in the city and doesn’t even come out to mow it. The town does it every now and then, then bills the owner for it.

When she got to the grocery store, who should she run into?

Our vandal and his wife.

*sigh*

At least his wife was with him!

Long story short, they offered to bring her stuff home for her – it was too late in the day for the grocery store to do a delivery – so she was able to do a larger shopping trip. I don’t know which of their many vehicles they had, but when the time came, they didn’t have room for her walker, so our vandal drove her home with the groceries while his wife walked the walker over.

One thing my mother noted: his wife has never, ever, said anything negative about me or my brother. I told my mom, I don’t think his wife has any idea what our vandal is still doing. He certainly wouldn’t have left a voice mail message like the one he recently left on my brother’s phone, if his wife were around to hear him say those horrible things.

So my mother got her grocery shopping done, and didn’t need me to do it today. I only wish she understand that, while his wife may be genuine, our vandal doesn’t do stuff like this out of the kindness of his heart. It seems, no matter how bad he gets, my mother will always make excuses for him. But my brother, who has never been anything but kind and helpful to her, has pulled her butt out of the fire many times out of the years, and takes such good care of, she treats like crap.

How does that make sense?

Anyhow.

She did still need to go to the bank, plus she needed to get her prescriptions and a couple of things at the pharmacy. While she setting up to leave, I went out to get her walker ready; she keeps it parked outside her door, under a tiny corner shelf that all the apartments have. Like most people living there, she has a little display set up on it. Usually, religious in nature.

That’s when I saw something unfortunate.

Part of her display was a small card with a picture of a famous painting of Jesus on it.

It was torn in half.

My first thought was, our vandal did it as he left. One of the things he constantly has said to her, since my late brother died and more so after my father died, is that she will never go to heaven to be with her husband and her son, because she didn’t leave this property to him, like they would have wanted (which they most certainly did NOT want). Knowing she is deeply religious, he would often invoke God in some way in the many abusive messages he left on her answering machine until my brother finally got his number blocked.

When I brought it in to show my mother, though, she told me it was done by one of her neighbours. ??

My mother is not happy with some of the “homeless people” and “aboriginals” that have recently moved into her building. Apparently, one of them has behavioral issues, and tearing up my mother’s picture of Jesus would be something she would do.

My mother didn’t actually see it done, though, so who knows. My mother used to have a card with her name above the peep hole on her door that disappeared, and she thinks the same person did it. Unfortunately, my mother has a bad habit of accusing people of things, with no actual evidence for it, so there’s no way to know what actually happened.

She then asked me to put the pieces back outside her door, so others could see the sort of things this person (or whoever it was) will do.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

We were soon on our way out and on our way. My mother really struggled to get up in the truck but, my goodness, she manages! When we got this truck, I thought for sure she would never be able to get into it, yet there she is!

Even so, she was only up to going into the bank. Once at the pharmacy, she stayed in the truck while I went in to get her prescription and other items. Once I knew, more or less, how much it would be, I went to the truck for her loyalty card and cash, then went back in to pay for her items.

The staff at the pharmacy are quite familiar with my shopping for my mother by now. 😄

That done, I took my mother home. She told me she would have wanted to go somewhere else, like to a restaurant, just for a change of scenery, but didn’t want to be getting in and out of the truck any more than she had to.

She was pretty tired by then, anyhow, so I didn’t stay too much longer.

I remembered to grab the extra plumbing parts and pieces my daughter didn’t need to use when working on the bathroom taps, so after a quick stop at the feed store to get a 40 pound bag of kibble, I headed to the two store we got the parts from to return them. The one in the town nearest us is also near our usual grocery store, so I made a quick stop there. From there, it was a quick stop at the post office, then finally, home.

Where I found this to greet me as I headed to the house.

They were more than eager for their evening feeding, and prowling like ravenous lions! 😄

I took care of that as soon as I could. 😊

One of the things in the mail was something from the hospital my husband is supposed to get a sleep test done in. He is looking to switch from a CPAP to a BiPAP. His CPAP is due to be replaced. It is 90% covered by insurance, but that is done by paying for it first, then submitting the receipt. For the price of a CPAP, we could have hired a plumber to fix the taps and replace the hot water tank with a new one, and still had money left over. Plus, he’s having a hard time getting replacement hoses. Our province covers the cost of a BiPAP, though. To get one, he has to be reassessed, and that’s why he’s been referred to this hospital.

What he got in the mail was their questionnaire about his health history. Which was fine until he got to the end when, as he put it, he almost cried.

They wanted a list of his medications, and doses.

He cheated.

He cut off the list that’s on his bubble packs to put in with the form, and wrote “see attached”. Then he just had to add the “take as needed” medications, and his injections, to the list.

Tomorrow is Saturday and our post office is closed, but I’ll still make sure to get it in the mail box right away.

The next thing he’ll get is a telephone appointment. We’ll see if they need him to actually come in to do a sleep test or not. When he was first diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, we were living in this province, and there was an actual sleep research lab at the same hospital that now has the provinces cardiac clinic. I don’t think there is a sleep research lab anymore, and it looks like they no longer have people actually spending the night in the lab, hooked up to various monitors, while two technicians observed all night. When my mother was tested for sleep apnea, my SIL picked up the test machine in the city and I met her part way to get it. When my mother was ready to go to bed, I brought it over and helped her put on the hoses and heart monitors. I then came back in the morning to get the machine and delivered it to a Medigas office in the city for data analysis.

Which is more or less what I expect will happen with my husband, this time around.

Hopefully, this will all get processed fairly quickly. I think a BiPAP would be better for my husband. They weren’t available when my husband was first diagnosed.

So I didn’t end up getting anything done outside, like I’d hoped, but that’s okay. The important things got done, so that makes it a good day!

The Re-Farmer

Morning babies

October 9, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I had an unusually hard time getting out to do my morning rounds, today! 😁

As is now the routine, I started off by setting the outside cats’ kibble to soak in hot water before heading out. The cats were very hungry and eager for food!

There was even a skunk already there, coming in to eat along with the cats! I was going to chase it away, but I noticed it has some sort of injury around one eye and…

What can I say. I’m a suck for the skunks, as well as the cats!

At least the soaked kibble won’t cause problems for the skunk. They shouldn’t eat kibble, because of how their jaws are hinged. It can cause problems. Soft kibble, however, won’t do that.

It was very hungry.

Of course, I was keeping an eye out for the kitten that seems to be having issues. When I started putting food out, I saw it laying on the cat bed on the bottom of the shelf in front of the window.

It wasn’t moving, as I put the food out.

I was honestly prepared to have to dig a hole this morning, but when I came back with the empty food bowl, I saw the kitten. It was in the middle of a food tray, food right in front of it. Other cats were head butting it to get at the food, but it wasn’t eating.

So I picked it up and moved it to another tray, to see if it would start eating there.

It didn’t.

We’d tried to give it wet cat food last night. It wouldn’t eat that, either. The bowl was covered and still in the old kitchen, so I took it in to see if it would eat the wet cat food.

It didn’t.

I even tried to scoop it up with my fingers and put it right to its mouth.

It still wouldn’t eat.

It did, however, like and bite at my fingers. Eventually.

What it really wanted was snuggles.

Oh, my goodness, did it ever want snuggles!

I ended up sitting in my late father’s walker for a while, just holding it.

It still needed to eat something, though, so I ended up taking it, and the bowl of food, into the bathroom. I added warm water to the food, then used a larger syringe we now have to try and feed the kitten.

It did actually eat eagerly for a while, actively licking at the syringe.

But only a short while. I did force feed it a bit more, but it was far more interested in checking out the bathroom, and its own reflection in the mirror.

I do still get the impression there is something going on with its vision, yet it can clearly see at least somewhat.

It also seems wobbly on its legs.

I gave its eyes a wash, and cleared its crusty nose. There are definite lung issues going on, but that seems like the standard herpes related issues all the yard cats have.

Finally, I took it back to the sun room and managed to escape before it started finding my feet and laying its head on my boots again!

I had some followers as I did my morning rounds, though, including Eye Baby!

It was really hard to get a picture of him. He wouldn’t stop moving!

That eye looks so, so much better. I don’t know that it will ever improve beyond how it is now, but he seems to be completely adjusted to his condition. It certainly doesn’t slow him down in any way!

As I finished my rounds and started heading back in, through the sun room, I found this pile of cuties, watching me!

That’s one adult cat and four kittens, all mashed into that tiny cat bed! There is a larger cat bed right next to them, with a single kitten sleeping in it, but nope. They all needed to crowd together in the little one. 😄

I also spotted the little sick tabby.

His legs may be wobbly at times, but he still managed to get into the cat cage and settle onto one of the beds in there.

We will keep monitoring him and keep feeding him with the syringe. That will give him both food and hydration. Hopefully, he will start eating and drinking again on his own soon.

Or she. I haven’t tried to look, yet. 😄

In other things…

While I was working on this, I got a call from the supportive living coordinator about my mother. I updated them on some of the more recent changes, such as her macular degeneration, and starting Meals on Wheels. My mother is on that line, where she doesn’t quite fit for the services available in one level of care, but needs more care that would be a good fit for the other. The long term care coordinator also has my mother’s file, and the two of them will connect to talk about my mother, including the updated information I was able to give them just now, see where my mother needs to be, and how best to get her there!

My mother, meanwhile, just wants to be in one specific long term care home in the town nearest us. We’re trying to encourage her to take whatever they have available, because there’s just no way of knowing when a space will open. Once she’s in the system, she can be transferred later. She just needs to get in, first!

Progress is progress, though, and we’re slowing getting her there!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a morning harvest, plus another long day!

September 27, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had a long day taking my mother to her specialist appointment in the city yesterday, and now another long day with her today. I did have time to do some of my morning rounds, though, and was able to gather a good sized harvest!

In the giant colander, there are a good number of Chocolate Cherry tomatoes from by the chain link fence. I also picked a few green Seychelle beans from the bed shared with the Crespo squash, and I even found a few on the one plant next to the purple Carminat pole beans. There are even some Royal Burgundy bush beans in there.

I found a melon lying on the ground in the raised bed – it harvested itself! 😄 There are a couple of yellow peppers, plus a Sweet Chocolate. Some of the peppers that are supposed to be more orange are finally starting to turn colour. There’s a single G Star pattypan squash, plus a few San Marzano tomatoes.

When it came time to go into the old kitchen garden, I knew there would be quite a bit, so I grabbed the bin. Those are all Forme de Couer and Black Cherry tomatoes in there.

Including a rude looking tomato! Click over to the next photo to see what I mean. 😄

After that, I left things to my daughters and headed out to my mother’s.

Long story short: her apartment finally got sprayed for bed bugs. There were no sign of any, so they will have to come back only one more time. Her neighbour got sprayed, too. I get the impression that apartment has been the main source of the problem in the building.

My mother then had to stay out of her apartment for 6 hours. Technically, she should stay out for 12 hours, as she has respiratory issues, but she refuses.

The neighbor says they only need to stay out for 4 hours, but I have no idea where she got that from. The notification letter they all get says the same thing. At least 6 hours.

We made sure to take along my mother’s supper time medications, as well as the information sheets the eye clinic gave her, yesterday, to go over. While we were waiting for the exterminator to arrive, I did go through some with her. I took the grid eye test, which is a flat magnetic sheet, and put it on her fridge. The grid has a black dot in the middle that is supposed to be focused on. I spent some time explaining the test to her, how to do it, and that she should be checking her left eye with it, every day. I even held it for her while she did the test, as instructed.

While explaining the grid test to her, how to take the test, what she’s looking for, I was saying, your left eye this, your left eye that, with your left eye…

Yet she still stopped at one point and said, “with my right eye, then…”

…

No. Your right eye can’t even see the dot in the grid. It’s for your left eye.

It’s going to take a while for it to stick, I think!

We had a nice chat with the manager while her apartment was being sprayed – she parker her walker across from her door and would not move until the exterminator left.

Then we had to find something to do or somewhere to go for six hours.

I was going to move the truck into the loading zone in front of the doors, to make it safer for my mother to get in, but the exterminator’s truck was in there, and he was chatting with the manager. When I got there, I did apologize for my mother’s behaviour over all this.

She is still utterly convinced the exterminator rifled through her closet to find and steal 70+ year old passports. In fact, at one point when it came up in conversation, she started saying, “maybe I should call the police?” When I said no, she said I was accusing her of lying. I told her, I didn’t think she was lying, but that she probably just put them somewhere and forgot where. When she moves, she’ll probably find them again. Her response was that I was “against” her.

*sigh*

Anyhow…

It was a good thing I caught up with them, because the manager remembered to ask if my mother’s bed had mattress covers. She doesn’t, and the exterminator said she needs two – one for the mattress, one for the box spring. Then he remembered he might have one and checked in his truck. He did have one and gave it to me for my mother’s mattress. We’ll still need one for the box spring.

Then I mentioned I needed to move my truck so my mother could get in, and we said our goodbyes.

By this time, though, my mother had come out and was sitting in her walker, watching us suspiciously. She called me over before I moved the truck and started asking me questions… why was the exterminator still there? Why was the manager sitting in his truck? etc.

Oh, gosh. I just realized what she was getting at.

She thought they were waiting for her to leave, so the manager could use his master key to get into her apartment, so they could steal things.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

We got her into the truck and then headed out for lunch. There was one place she wanted to go to, because someone new bought it and she wanted to see how it was, now that it wasn’t “browny” people that owned it (it had been owned by a Korean family). *sigh* The place was still being worked on, on the inside, but when she saw the worker’s vehicles in the parking lot, she thought it was open and wanted me to go inside and check. I had to tell her, no, you can’t just walk into a construction zone!

So we went to a chicken and pizza restaurant.

She ended up ordering a vegetable pizza this time, which I normally would not have thought much of, except that my mother is once again deciding that the reason she’s having trouble with her eyes is because of food, and so she needs to eat more vegetables and green things.

There is no known cause for macular degeneration, and there is no food she can eat or not eat that will make any difference. But she heard something somewhere – maybe last week, maybe last month, maybe 30 years ago – and just latches on to things.

We’re going to have to watch her on that, because she’s going to start causing malnutrition in herself if we don’t.

I had something else, so she had a small pizza to herself, with some left over that was packed up for later. We took our time eating, though – we did have 6 hours to kill! – then went across the street to a little department store she wanted to check out, while she was out and about. I helped her get across the street, then moved the truck to park by the store, so she wouldn’t have to cross the street again. The nice thing about that was that I was able to pull up really close to the curb – and that extra height made it downright easy for her to get into the truck when she was done!

We then both went in and did a bit of shopping.

There’s only so long we could drag that out, though.

There was nowhere else she wanted to go, and there is nowhere in this town where one can just hang out. We even tried driving around parts of town we’ve never gone into before, but there wasn’t a whole lot of that, either. 😄

We managed to use up about 2-3 hours before finally just going back to her building and sitting in the common room. No one else was around, so we brought out the information the eye clinic gave her and I went over it with her. Most of it, the doctor had already explained to her really well.

It didn’t take long to go through it all.

I was completely prepared to stay with my mother until 7pm, but she told me that I could go home. She was really tired and was going to just sit and close her eyes for a while. She had her leftovers for supper, and I’d added a bottle of orange juice I’d gotten with her meal on the way home from the city yesterday, that got forgotten in the truck, so she was prepared for taking her medication with her supper while in the common room.

So I headed home.

When I got home, my younger daughter was adding more supports to the tomatoes at the chain link fence that yesterday’s winds had managed to blow partly over. I ended up helping her with that, then she moved on to start breaking down the tree that the winds blow over and onto a crabapple tree.

I had gone to talk to her when our phones both dinged. My husband had sent a message.

My mother had called and left a message on the answering machine. Something about her keys?

I had completely forgotten.

While digging in her purse at one point, my mother gave me her keys to put in my pocket, so they wouldn’t get lost.

They were still in my pocket!!!

I had dashed into the house to get my purse when the phone range again. It was my mother, trying again – from the number on call display, a neighbour had let her use their phone. I told her, I was leaving right then and there!

When I got there, so was so apologetic about having me drive all the way back again. Meanwhile, I was apologizing for forgetting I had her keys! It was pretty funny!

Enough time had passed that she had eaten her supper and taken her medications. It was still early to get into her apartment, but by less than an hour, so we went in anyway.

I had offered to come back to help her put things back and she had said no, so this actually worked out.

I was able to put the mattress cover on her bed – and found out that they’d given her, and others, mattress covers long ago. She didn’t want me to put it on her bed, and basically scoffed at the fact that they had been given them in the first place.

*sigh*

So, somewhere in her closet, she had 2 more of these. Maybe when my sister next visits my mother, she’ll be ablet to find one and get it onto the box spring.

I made up her bed and put a few things away.

If she didn’t have to wait until the health care aid came to help with her nightly medications, she would have gone to bed right then and there!

I did make sure to set out the little miniature tagine bowl and lid I’d brought for her. She thought it was adorable! This will be a handy container for the health care aide to put her pills into, after removing them from the bubble pack, so they can both easily see that the right number are in there. Plus, my mother can more easily pick up the little bowl to take them, rather than trying to use her hands. Some of her fingers are deformed with arthritis.

The extra trip was good for another reason. I had forgotten to hit a bank machine earlier, to take cash out for the septic guy. We’re almost into October. Time to get the tank emptied for the winter.

We’ll need to contact the septic repair company again, too, and hopefully get a date on when they can come and repair the leaking pipes at the expeller!

I really hope we’re not getting ghosted by this company. We’ve had this happen before with other companies, in the first couple of years after we moved here. I have reason to believe it has something to do with our vandal defaming us, though I have no actual proof. Our vandal has a past history of trying to prevent companies from doing things here at the farm, and even on property in the heart of our little hamlet that my parents used to own. Then, when they tried to sell it, he drove off two potential buyers!

Yes, he felt he was entitled to that property, just like he feels he’s entitled to this property, too.

Of course, it could be this company is just really busy, trying to get jobs done before winter. Unfortunately, with past experience, I can’t help but wonder.

Well, if we don’t hear from them after trying to call them back several times, there is another company we can contact again. They are in a completely different town that our vandal doesn’t really go to, that I know of, so the chances of them having any contact with our vandal is very low.

The main thing is that this gets repaired before the ground freezes.

Thankfully, our system has still been working so far, even if the greywater is all just soaking into the ground, as if we had a septic field instead of an expeller. The leak must be pretty close to the surface for the ground to become saturated like that, so if it doesn’t get repaired, the whole thing will freeze, the greywater will have nowhere to go, and the ice will break the pipes even more.

*sigh*

Tomorrow, I will hopefully not have to go anywhere, except maybe the dump. I don’t know if I dare to to the nearest landfill again, with how bad it has gotten lately (I don’t want another flat tire!), but the next nearest one is also open on Saturdays. I just need to find it.

If all goes well, though, I’ll finally be able to catch up with stuff here at home!

Like prep and freeze a whole lot of bell peppers and melons, and either freeze whole tomatoes, or start another sauce in the Crockpot.

I really look forward to just staying home. 😁

I’m so tired!

The Re-Farmer

What a long day!

September 26, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s not even 8:30pm as I start this, but it feels so much later – and not just because the days are shorter and it’s full dark outside!

Today was my mother’s appointment with the eye specialist in the city, but there were things I needed to do before getting to her place.

Which meant, of course, I got almost zero sleep last night. It seems the more I need to actually get sleep before scheduled activities, the harder it is for me to actually fall asleep!

Meanwhile, my daughters took care of all my usual outdoor routines today, which was a huge help.

The first thing I had to do that had me leaving quite a bit earlier than I would have needed to get to my mother’s, was to stop at the home care office. They needed a couple of signatures from me related to the hospital bed they provide for my husband. I also had a copy of the Power of Attorney paperwork for my brother that they needed in order to process my mother’s file for long term care. This was the last thing they needed as far as the paperwork goes. I spoke to the coordinator for a while. He had already talked to the next coordinator about long term care placement. Physically, my mother would only qualify for supportive living, which would be great for her, but behaviorally, they would not be able to provide her the support she needs. Her racism certainly would make it more difficult, too – the home care aids have already reported some unfortunate things my mother has said. Since they were there for only a few minutes, to help her take her medications, there isn’t a lot of time for her to really get bad with any of them. They do have instructions, though, on how to deflect and, if necessary, simply get out of the situation if it’s particularly bad.

As for the care facilities, her paperwork will first go to the supportive living coordinator, where it will be rejected. Then it will go to the long term care coordinator, who is already aware of my mother’s circumstances, and a decision will be made. If she does qualify for long term care, though, this will get her on a waiting list, unless something happens that puts her under urgent placement. Like if she fell and broke a hip, she would go straight from the hospital into long term care.

Or if she got herself evicted, though that’s a grey area.

We spoke about the meal assist, too. We’ll be trying it out at every two weeks, first. They have only 2 hours to do the meal preparation. We would have to make sure they have all the ingredients, any recipes needed, and containers for the meals to go into the fridge or freezer.

After finishing at the office, I was going to pick up fried chicken and potato wedges at our favorite place – the gas station! 😄 It was too early for their chicken to be ready, though, so I stopped at the grocery store to get drinks. There weren’t any that my mother would be willing to drink, so I went to the gas station and just parked until I was sure their first batches of chicken would be ready. I actually found appropriate drinks there, too!

I also made sure to pick up a couple of 5 Hour Energy bottles, and drank one of them right away.

My mother was very happy when I arrived with the food! She keeps saying, she shouldn’t eat fried chicken, because she has made associations with it and various physical complaints, but she really loves their fried chicken was wedges!

We had enough time that we could have a nice, relaxed lunch, and I could tell her about how things went at the home care office. We talked about her bubble packs, and how she needs to not take anything except when the home care aides come in. She told me how, this morning, the aide took the prescriptions out of the blister and set them in front of her in a pile, but when my mother spread them out and counted them, one was missing! The aide, on hearing that, said that she would need to make a report, but my mom knew it had been in the blister. After looking around, they did find it. It may have just stuck to her hand or the packaging as she got it out for my mother.

I told my mother that when I take my supplements, etc. I have a small bowl I put them into first, then take them all at once from the bowl. She liked that idea, so I went digging around her cupboards and found the smallest bowl she had – an absolutely delightful vintage glass dessert bowl with three handles and a pattern of grape clusters and leaves. I’m totally in love with it!

It’s still pretty big for the job, though, so when I told her I collect tiny bowls and how handy they are, she asked if I could bring her one.

I now have a mini tagine wrapped up and in my purse to bring to her. I think she’ll find it adorable!

We talked about the meal assist, and she’s not happy with it, and says that she can do meals on wheels. They deliver 5 days a week. It’s certainly an option, if this doesn’t work out, but we’ll try meal assist first.

We started to talk about the exterminator coming to her place tomorrow, and that I would be there early to try and move as many things away from the walls as can be done. She started to get very angry about it again. She’s convinced they have singled her out for abuse, and that they just want to go through her stuff and steal things. Frankly, I no longer have patience for her behaviour on this. She is very much at risk of getting evicted, and she doesn’t take it seriously. This has all dragged on far longer than it should have, because she would not let them do their jobs. So many people are bending over backwards to try and help her, and she just refuses to accept that she might be the one that’s causing the problem, not everyone else.

I was able to redirect that conversation more than a few times today!

When we left, we had what turned out to be a very easy and uneventful drive. The location of this clinic may be on the opposite end of the city from us, but it is very easy to get to from my mother’s town. The only unfortunate thing about the drive was that I was feeling myself start to fall asleep. I’m glad I got two of those 5 Hour Energy things. My mother even helped open the bottle for me while I was driving!

Once there, I got her checked in and then we sat in the waiting room. We were early, so I told her I was going to close my eyes for a bit.

I think I actually fell asleep for a bit!

Whether I did nor didn’t, by the time my mother’s name was called, I felt so much better.

The first stage of her appointment was for an assistant to ask various questions, check her current medications list, and try to get an idea of just how long my mother has been having issues. It was not easy. My mother’s sense of time has gotten pretty bad, but for all her complaints about her vision, she insisted the problem was her glasses, and didn’t even realize that her right eye was going blind!

He did a quick eye test with her, with the left eye covered, then again with the right eye covered. Her left eye can still see pretty darn good. With her right eye, she couldn’t even see a single large letter C. All she could tell was that there was a roundish shape. She also had some issues when he held up different numbers of fingers at different distances. Sometimes she got it right, sometimes not. At one point, she couldn’t even see him waving his hand back and forth in front of her right eye.

Next, he took her to a machine to take photos and video of the inside of her eye.

It was not easy.

The typical instruction is “focus on the green X in the middle.” To which my mother would say, “there is no X.”

After that went back and forth a bit, I told her to just look straight ahead. He went with that for the rest of the testing on that eye.

The assistant was so very sweet and awesome. He treated her so nicely, with such a gentle mannerism. I found myself wanting to give him a great big hug! 😄

It took quite a while to get the images he needed. It’s hard enough to stare straight ahead and not blink for several seconds at the best of times. It’s even harder for my mother, who had nothing she could focus on.

That done, it was back to an examination room, and for the doctor to see her.

It turns out her eye is really bad, and he was pretty alarmed about it. She’s had blood pooling in her eye for quite some time, but we just can’t get a handle on when she started to have problems. The only thing I could confirm is that I took my mother for her regular eye exam in February, and there was nothing of concern at the time. I was there and saw the photos of my mother’s eye. This damage was not there.

The doctor spent quite a bit of time explaining things to her and making sure she understood what was going on, as best she could, and to ensure she was able to give informed consent for the treatment.

She had to get drops to dilate her pupils, antibacterial drops, a needle to freeze the eye, and finally the needle for her first treatment.

All of which my mother put up with extremely well. When he was telling her what had to be done and made sure to get her verbal and written consent, her response was simply, “do what you have to do.”

Personally, I think I’d rather go blind than have injections directly into my eyeball!

She was pretty amazing about it.

Along with all that, he took the time to give me information booklets, a grid test for her left eye that she’s supposed to do daily, and a bottle of artificial tears. He really stressed with my mother, how important it is to NOT rub her eyes, touch them in any way, or even touch her face near that right eye. If her eye starts to itch, she is to take an eye drop.

If she starts to feel severe pain, though, she is to immediately return to the clinic to see him or, if it’s the weekend, to a nearby hospital that has a specialty in eye care.

When we finished and I was getting her next appointment in 4 weeks, and helping her pay for some of the tests not covered by our system, my mother just sat on her walker seat with her eyes closed, because she couldn’t really see. Once everything was taken care of and she was in the truck, I gave her my husband’s driving glasses – sunglasses designed to fit over regular glasses.

She really, really loved how much that helped!

Also, she looked adorable in camo print driving glasses. 😄

By this time, I was getting really hungry, and I figured my mother would be, too. When she started talking about getting me to heat up a can of soup for her supper when we got to her place, I was not about to leave it that way! I wanted to get gas in the city, where it’s a lot cheaper right now, and the gas station I stopped at had a Burger King attached to it. I ended up getting chicken fry meals for both of us, as that was something easy to eat while driving.

My mother said that the food could wait until we got to her place but I told her, when I get hungry, I start to become dizzy and ill, so I needed to eat. I set my food out on the console, and hers stayed in the bag.

As we were driving, I saw in my peripheral vision, as she reached out to take a fry!

“Temptation!” she said. 😄😄

I told her she could help herself! She had only a few, though.

Once we got to her place, though, I brought the food out for her to have right away. The home care worker would have come and gone while we were out, so I made sure she had her supper time pills with food.

She was quite happy with this.

She still wanted me to open up a can of soup for her, though, for later.

I took the time to explain some of what we brought home from the clinic, but only briefly. I’ll be back tomorrow and I will stay with her for the 6 hours she has to stay out of her apartment, if that’s what it takes! That will give us plenty of time to sit down with the information and I can explain things to her in ways she could understand.

When we first got to my mother’s place, though, I did a quick check on my messages and found my daughter had sent me photos.

It was very windy today.

We lost a tree.

When I got home, I just had to check it out and get some photos of my own, too.

That is one of the big trees!

In the second photo of the slide show above, I just had to get a picture of how perfectly it fell in between to other trees, without getting caught on them!

The crab apple tree in the third photo was not so fortunate.

The spruce landed right in the middle, breaking off about a third of it.

Well, this is one of the sick trees we were needing to remove, anyhow!

We should be able to use the trunk of that spruce, though. This is one of trees too big to use as a raised garden bed. We should be able to take the bottom, widest, 10 ft and set it aside for the outdoor kitchen we will be building. Part of the trunk is cracked, though, so I’m not sure we we’ll get a full 10 feet that isn’t damaged, or what we can salvage from the rest of it.

We shall see. It’s way too windy to even consider breaking it down and cleaning it up.

Once again, it will be up to my daughters to take care of the outside stuff, as I will be with my mother tomorrow.

I’m not sure what we can do for such a long time. There aren’t places to just hang out in her town, and I don’t think she’d be up to any outings. Plus, we want to go over the information the doctor gave her. We could stay in the common room of her building, but it might not be easy to have a private conversation in such a public space.

Well, we’ll figure it out!

Until then, I need to get myself to bed and, hopefully, get a solid night’s sleep this time!

On that note…

Have a good night, my friends!

The Re-Farmer

So many distractions, I almost forgot!

September 11, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s just past 5:30pm right now, and I’m so tired, I’m about to go to bed! What a draining day, and I’ve got to be on the road early, tomorrow.

First, the fun stuff.

Catio progress!

Last night, I was able to reinforce the damage wire mesh along the door, after painting the base. The door still opens fully, with no obstructions, which was my goal.

My daughter did a second coat on the base, as the original white paint was showing through. She also painted the water stained underside of the “floating” shelves. Once the paint has cured for a couple of hours, it’ll be flipped upright, the plastic cover removed, and the rest will be painted. Then, the roof panels can be put on.

As for my day with my mother, she insisted on going back to her previous eye clinic, as she decided the one I took her too screwed up. The eye doctor there is an Asian woman, so my mother’s racism is in full play.

It turns out, the problem wasn’t her glasses at all. Since her last eye tests, she developed macular degeneration in one eye. It’s almost completely blind.

They can’t do anything for her out here, other than get her to take special vitamins to protect her other eye. She will need to go to the city once a month for eye injections. As the person that will be driving her, the specialist clinic will call me, probably within the next 2 weeks, to start that.

She is now glad she went to a “real doctor”. The thing is, I was in the room with her last appointment. I was there when they took images of her eyes. I saw the images when the doctor showed them to her. She did not have it then. This is something that can happen quickly, which is obviously how it is with her. But this doctor is a white man – and she knows his parents! – so that means he’s a good doctor, nor the other doctor.

*sigh*

After that, we had lunch, and ran into a friend of mine from high school! I spent time explaining things the eye doctor told us as we ate.

Then again as I drove her home.

Then again, after I picked up her meds, Tylenol and the eye vitamins she needs to take, and her groceries.

Then again, because she couldn’t figure out why she had 3 bottles of pills instead of two. She suddenly decided the vitamins were her prescription medication, and the prescription medication were the vitamins.

They have completely different instructions.

I ended up writing it all down, complete with illustrations, to help her remember.

At least she can still read with her left eye!

The monthly treatment she will be getting should fix her eye, though maybe not 100%. We don’t know how long it will take.

That’s the short version of a very long day.

I need to try and get some sleep, now!

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, Button update, and my mother is determined to get herself evicted

September 9, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

What a long, long day.

I’m exhausted, and will make this as sort as I can.

First up, the good stuff. Check out this harvest!

It was a sort of double harvest. I wasn’t expecting to gather anything, but that first and oldest melon finally dropped off its vine. That thing is about 9 inches across! There were also a few San Marzano tomatoes, but I didn’t have a container, and the melon made it harder to carry things. So I put them in the old kitchen, then went back to the old kitchen garden to gather was it in the second photo. I found myself picking a good handful of those tiny strawberries. Then I checked the Black Cherry tomatoes and found quite a few I could pick, hidden among the leaves. Way more that I expected!

My brother and his wife were expecting to come early to drop off another load, but I left before they arrived, so I never saw them. I went to my mother’s town, got a few things done, then got to her place nice and early. I’m really glad I did, so I could go over the letter she got from the hospital. I knew the location, but when I looked it up on Google Maps street view, across a specific parking lot from the main entrance, but I couldn’t see where the clinic entrance was.

Turns out, that’s because it was recently built in the parking lot, and street view hasn’t been updated yet.

When we got there, I had to park illegally because there were not parking spots available anywhere. Not even disabled parking. I then helped my mother up the ramps from hell to the door.

They were excellent ramps. There was just 3 levels of them, switch-backed up to the door, and that was a LOT of walking for a 93 yr old woman with busted up knees, using a walker!

I then had to leave her to register herself so I could find somewhere to park – several blocks away!

Long story short, she had some very uncomfortable tests, but she now has a diagnosis, a new prescription to try, and a plan of action.

I also found out that she has NOT been making any effort to drink more water, and the most the nurse questioned her in preparation for the tests, the more obvious it became that a lot of her problems would improve if she simply drank more water. She’s only drinking the equivalent of 1 500ml water bottle a day! She’s digging in her heals on this one, though, as she is completely convinced it has to be food that’s causing her problems. Of course, it’s the food she needs the most that she’s decided are bad for her. *sigh*

That done, the clinic was able to fax her new prescription in, and make a follow up telephone appointment in 3 months for the doctor so ask her how it’s working and adjust the dose, if needed. There are other drugs that can be tried, but this one has basically no side effects, so that’s the one he’s starting with.

On the way to her home, we stopped at a restaurant in her town, as neither of us had eaten since about 9 or 10am, and we got to the restaurant at 6pm. She needed to take her evening pills, and had brought her bubble pack for the list of medications they needed, so she went to take those – without water – before we went in.

Which is when I saw that she’s been messing with her meds again. She’s taking her morning pills, but for the past few days, skipping her evening pills. When she got this evening’s pills, she took the one that is supposed to be taken before bed at the same time. Something she promised she would stop doing.

When we finally got to her place and opened the door, we found her mail on the floor. She started to try and distract me with one envelope that she said was an invitation, but it was the other one that got my attention. It was from the government public housing department that owns her building. When I mentioned that, she tried to dismiss is as probably being about her rent.

I opened it.

It was her final notice.

She refused to allow the exterminators in her suite again, which goes against her rental agreement. This is the second warning letter they’ve sent her. If she does it again, she will be evicted.

As I was reading this to her, she basically started to laugh about it. When I tried to stress the seriousness of this, she started ranting about the “drunkard” in another unit, and how they’re not kicking him out. Then she started saying “this isn’t Russia”.

She refuses to accept how serious the consequences of her actions are.

It is so incredibly frustrating. She is her own worse enemy!

*sigh*

After reading the letter, we moved on to the information booklet she was given and I briefly showed her the sections that gave her concrete actions to do – and one of them is, drink more water! That was as much as she was up to, and I left soon after.

I’ll be back in a couple of days to drive her to another appointment. I’ve updated the family about all this, and I hope my siblings can get through to her on just how much of a problem she is causing herself. Both about the eviction warning, and messing with her medications.

There’s not much we can do about it, either. Unless a doctor declares her cognitively unfit, and she isn’t there yet, she is going to have to face the consequences of her actions.

Ugh.

Enough about that.

Throughout the day, I was also getting messages from the Cat Lady. She was taking Button to the vet. When her mother was cat sitting for them, she noticed that Button was having trouble seeing at night. His hearing isn’t back, either, so both his eyes and ears were going to be checked.

He has also had quite the growth spurt – after being dewormed three times, he’s finally putting on weight! Even the clinic commented on how big he’s getting.

They have decided that his issue is basically being developmentally delayed. His eyes are healthy, but just not where they should be for his age. He was treated for eat mites, and they believe his hearing will also recover.

That’s the good news.

The frustrating news is, the person who was going to adopt him has instead adopted another cat and is no longer interested in him. Given his vision and hearing issues, the Cat Lady wants to make sure he goes with someone who can take care of these issues until he grows past them.

Assuming he gets adopted out at all.

It was recently confirmed that a cat of theirs that was startled by a noise and disappeared, was the victim of a coyote. The Cat Lady says that Button is helping to heal her heart. She absolutely adores him.

I really hope she finds someone for Button. They already have way too many cats from us! She’s still trying to get The Wolfman adopted out, but any time someone comes over to see him, he hisses and even swipes, and runs away!

I’m just sad that the potential adopter backed out. A vet – even a large animal vet – would have been the perfect placing for Button.

So that is where we are now, and I am ready to crawl into bed and pass out.

I just know that the moment my head hits the pillow, I’m going to suddenly be wide awake! That was me last night, so I can really, really use some real sleep tonight!

The Re-Farmer

The day so far; a tiny surprise harvest, and why am I so tired?

September 6, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

My daughter and I are home now, from visiting with my mother. I’m glad my daughter was with me, because I had to get her to drive us home!

I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

I did my morning rounds as usual, but was not expecting to harvest anything today. Instead, I gathered this tiny harvest!

Yup. Two types of strawberries!

The larger ones are the Albion Everbearing strawberries that have recovered remarkably well after getting eaten by a deer. I’ve had the odd ripe strawberry every now and then, but this is the first time there was more than one to gather. There were actually more than what’s in the photo, as I left behind a couple that were slug damaged.

The little ones are from the strawberries in the wattle weave bed that were grown from seed last year. They are still blooming, too, and there are lots of little green berries still developing. It’s a shame they don’t taste any better.

Once back inside, my younger daughter and I started getting ready to head out. My older daughter wasn’t going to make it. She’s been burning the candle at both ends, working on new commissions, and was not feeling well today.

The general plan was for us to have a sit down restaurant lunch with my mother, then go to the nature reserve. My daughter was hoping we could do a picnic instead. With my mother, it all comes down to how she feels, and what she is up to.

I remembered to bag up a few slicer tomatoes for her. Just enough for a taste, really. She’s not supposed to eat acidic foods, but small amounts, early in the day, don’t bother her. My sister usually brings my mother large amounts of tomatoes, forgetting completely that my mother isn’t supposed to eat them. This year, however, she mentioned her tomatoes did not do well, so she doesn’t really have any to give. We have so many of the Forme De Couer tomatoes, there is plenty to spare.

We packed supplies we’d need to eat outside, if we did end up doing that. Then my daughter made lots of noise, topping up the outside cat food, to lure kittens away from the truck. There was one kitten that just did not want to get out from under there! We managed to get them away, though, and soon we were off.

We left early enough to stop and pick up a birthday cake for my mother. Or, in this case, a variety of cheesecake slices! We still got to my mother’s early.

We didn’t stay for long before heading out. My mother needed to stop at her bank, first. They merged with another and she said she needed to order new checks. She’s sent a check and said it was rejected, because of the old company name.

Getting in and out of the truck was difficult for my mother, though. She tires so quickly now, too.

Once at the bank, the teller was confused about a check being returned, since all the key information was unchanged. It took a while to get the rest of the store out of her. It turns out, she did not get a check returned. She had sent the check to a grandson for his birthday. He had come over to see her, and told her it was rejected, apparently because of the date. It’s possible my mother wrote the date out in her usual mix of Polish, English, numbers and Roman numerals.

This grandson is one that never contacts her, nor returns her calls, and hasn’t since he turned 18 and got his inheritance from my late father. Now, suddenly, when there was a problem with a check she sent him, he shows up at her door? He also never returned the check, but just told her there was a problem. It seems the name being an issue was something my mother “figure out” herself. My guess is, with him there, she just gave him cash. My mother has a terrible habit of pandering to those who treat her the worst, while treating those who help her the most, quite badly.

The more the story came out, the more the teller seemed concerned. She checked, and no one had tried to cash a check in the last 3 months. She did assure my mother that she did not have to order new checks. The ones she has now are perfectly fine.

From there, she decided she was still up to a sit down restaurant. We did bring up the idea of getting take out and going on a picnic, but she acted as if she never heard.

We had an excellent lunch. My mother insisted that she would pay for it, but she never tips, so I snuck ahead and paid for it. By the time we were done eating, my mother decided she was up to going to the nature reserve. That got amended to her staying in the truck while my daughter and I explored. Not that we’d leave her by herself, but that’s what she pictured in her mind.

When we got there, I was going to just follow the roads to parking lots and we could see what we could see. I did end up taking a sign road, which turned out to be exclusively for people with disabilities. This allowed us to see parts of the sanctuary we had never seen before.

As we were going home, though, I was hit by exhaustion. The sleepy kind. It just came out of nowhere and slapped me upside the head!

When we got to my mother’s my daughter and I were going to leave right away, but my mother insisted we stop for tea and some of the cheesecake. She asked about the bill at the restaurant, and I showed her the slip that did not include the tip. She gets very angry when she sees us tip! She was very… parsimonious, shall we say, about paying me back, and actually underpaid me. Then she declared that my driving her was my birthday gift for her, as her reason for not contributing anything for gas this time. Which I normally wouldn’t care about, if I hadn’t found out she’s been practically throwing her money at people that have disowned her again. My daughters have joked that maybe we should start being mean to her, too, and she’ll start throwing money at us, too. Not that we could ever do that, but the sad thing is, it is probably true.

Overall, we managed to keep things okay during this visit. We were able to cut away from her usual racist rants, and she was only moderately insulting to my daughter about her appearance. As for why my other daughter didn’t make it, when we told her she wasn’t feeling well, my mother flat out said she didn’t believe it. 🫤 Ah, well.

She started showing us pictures and newspaper clippings that are her typical segues to more racist rants, so we cut things short, then made our escape. I could see she was getting very tired, anyhow.

Which I could completely understand.

Before we left, she gave us a couple of cards for the girls, and it turned out she was at least as generous to them, as she had been with the grandson that only shows up when money is involved.

My daughter drove us home, and I’m so glad she was there do to it. I was able to close my eyes for a bit during the drive home, at least!

Not enough to get some rest, though, so that’s what I’m about to do. Even though it’s late afternoon. I have been drifting off, time and again, just working on this blog post!

It is most definitely time for a nap!

The Re-Farmer

Garden stuff, seeing a friend, and lysine is finally in… but it’s not the same!

September 4, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I tried going to bed early last night, which actually worked for a change, so I was able to get out and in the garden early. We were getting warnings for a possible thunderstorm (which never happened), so as soon as my morning rounds were done, I wanted to work on my tomatoes.

The first of the Instagram slideshow photos is as far as I got with the San Marzano tomatoes in the main garden area.

I was even able to pick a few tomatoes, first. They were so tightly packed in with the vines, a couple were weirdly misshapen, having had to grow around stems and even one of the bamboo supports.

With this bed, though, only the main stems were supported by the stakes. These weren’t pruned, so they all have suckers on them. The three southernmost plants (in the foreground) had suckers spread out and lying on the ground like a thick, green spider’s web! You can see a bit, how I added support to those vines.

For most of them, I couldn’t reach the stake in the middle, so I loosely tied jute twine to the stem I wanted to support, under a leaf stem, or the nub of one, if it was one that was broken off. I did prune some of the bottom leaves away, awhile back, as they were crushing the onions planted around them. The twine was then wrapped around the stem, with extra wraps near the base so it wouldn’t pull upwards. I didn’t skimp on the wraps all the way up, and made sure that any branches with clusters of tomatoes on them had wraps above and below. Once near the top, the whole thing was gently lifted, and the top tied to the support.

With so many of these branches splayed out around the main stem, I alternated sides as I worked, to more evenly distribute the weight. I also moved the metal posts that were marking the corners of the bed, as I was shifting it over. Those were brought closer in and pushed deep into the soil, so they – hopefully! – wouldn’t be pulled over. I then anchored the stake at the end of the row onto them.

As I worked on the next two tomato plants, I also straightened stakes that were being pulled down by the weight of the main vine, and secured them to the previous stake. With one plant, I could access the stake as I worked, so the jute twine was anchored to the stake at the bottom, rather than the base of the stem I was working on. A couple of vines were even anchored to the stake about half way up, as they were being wrapped. Not too close against the stake, though, but with space for air flow.

The three at the south end got done, but it took so long, I had to move on. The others don’t look like they will need individual wrapping like this. I’ll see, when I get back to them.

The second photo in the slideshow above is of the Black Cherry vines in the Old Kitchen Garden. They are getting so big and heavy, the lilac they are climbing is bending from the weight! These are already tied off and supported as much as can be, though.

Note for future reference. Find a way to incorporate stakes into the wattle weave to support things like this! The lilac can handle supporting the luffa vines just fine, but these tomatoes are just too big and heavy, and those branches are not near the main stems of the lilac.

It was the bed with the Forme de Couer tomatoes that needed help. I had to post this photo separately on Instagram, because it’s oriented differently. It was the bamboo stakes that had to be helped.

Each plant has a pair of stakes to support it. The pair in the bottom right corner of the photo were so heavy, the stakes were twisted around and starting to lean into the bath between this bed, and the wattle weave bed with the Black Cherry tomatoes. You can even see a bit, just above where the jute twine is tied, that one of them had started to split and bend. If there hadn’t already been some twine holding the pairs of stakes together, there’s no doubt the whole thing would have broken and fallen into the path.

That one got attention first. I was able to carefully pull the stakes upright again, then anchored them to the opposite corner of the raised bed. More twine was added to the pairs of stakes along one side, anchoring them to each other, then to the corners of the raised bed at the other end, before being tied off on the last pair of stakes on the opposite side. The other stakes on that side had already had support added to them and did not need more.

Once that was done, it was time to clean up and head into town. My friend from out of province had time to meet for lunch, one more time before she had to go home.

I left early so that I could stop at the dollar store, first. With one of the yard cats going in for a neuter next week, we have to start deciding which one we’ll be trying to catch. The friendliest ones have already done, but one of those is really hard to tell apart from others, now that the wound on his front leg is completely healed, without even a scar visible through is fur.

What I’ve decided to do is to try and put break-away collars on the four that have already been neutered, then another to add onto whichever cat we manage to catch and bring in next.

The store had only one style with breakaway snaps on them, so that’s what I got. They all have bells, which will need to be removed. These are outdoor cats, and they earn their keep by keeping the rodent population down. Having a bell would defeat the purpose, plus make them easier targets for coyotes.

After that, I hung around and enjoyed the day until my friend and I met up and went for lunch in the fish ‘n chips place that reopened not long ago. They’d been closed for many months, repairing and renovating after a fire (when I first saw the boarded up building, I actually thought they’d been vandalized). It’s the same owners using their same recipes, and their food was every bit as delicious as before. We quite enjoyed our lunch – and the portions were generous enough that both of us got take out containers to bring the leftover home!

My friend still had some time left before she had to go, so we got to walk on the beach for a while – a nice quite beach, now that the summertime crowds are done, and it’s the middle of the week! Then she had to head back. She’s leaving very early in the morning, and has a long drive ahead of her, so she had lots to do to get ready. Including a grocery shopping trip for her mother.

That sure sounds familiar! 😁

While I was in town, I got a message from my husband, letting me know the feed store had called, and the lysine they’d ordered for me was in. So, after we said our goodbyes, I headed to my mother’s town to pick it up, along with more kibble for the outside cats.

Speaking of which…

This morning, I tried to do a head count of just kittens. That’s a bit of a challenge, as some of the adult cats are pretty small, and the older kittens are almost as big as they are!

I counted twenty.

I think.

In the photo above, with the kittens, you can see the bright white granular type lysine on the bottom of the kibble tray. That is why I was wanting to have a finer powder, like I had been able to get before, but is no longer available.

If you look at the second picture of the slide show above, you’ll see the lysine I got today. I opened one of the tubs right in the store, as soon as I paid for it.

This bulk lysine is sold for horses, so I guess they don’t bother bleaching it white, like for human consumption! It’s still granular, though. Lysine is lysine, though, so it is otherwise the same.

I think what I’ll just have to do is use that Magic Bullet set we were gifted with, and just process the granules into a fine powder. This will coat the kibble better, and the cats are more likely to actually get a dose of the stuff. Thankfully, aside from eye baby, there don’t seem to be any sick cats out there right now. Just a little bit of crusty bits visible in the corners of some of their eyes, but nothing major. None need to have their eyes washed. Even eye baby’s messed up eye isn’t leaking much. It’s just really… gross.

No, I will not inflict you with a photo!

Anyhow.

Along with the lysine (I got two 1 pound tubs, which cost just under $20 each), I got the bag of kibble I’d paid for last time, but they turned out to have only two bags in stock, not three. Then I got one more on top of that.

Once done at the feed store, I headed home.

I don’t know what’s been going on with me lately, but during the drive home, a wave of tired just hit me. I don’t mean physically tired, or even mentally tired. I mean sleepy tired!

I did get a good night’s sleep! Honest!

Once I was at home, I unloaded everything but the 40 pound bags of kibble in the box of the truck, then went for a nap. When I woke up after a couple of hours, I was feeling even more groggy than when I lay down in the first place!

So I just did my evening rounds, but let my daughter that was going to help me, know that I wasn’t up to finishing with those last San Marzano tomatoes. They will be fine for another day.

Meanwhile, the writing of this paused just had a pause to it, as I dosed and fed eye baby, while my daughter held him, wrapped up like a purrito – and there was much purring happening!

Gosh, I wish all cats took their meds as well as this little guy!

I gave his face a bit of a wash around the eye, and just laid a warm, damp cloth over the eye itself, before giving him some saline drops. I wish I knew what I was looking at with that eye. All I can say for sure is, it’s getting better – as in, it’s not sticking out as much, and not leaking like it had been, when we first started treating him. He even seemed to enjoy the cleaning.

That is now done for the night, and that’s as much as I have energy for. I’m done for the day. My younger daughter and I have plans to watch Columbo together tonight.

I’m hoping I don’t fall asleep in my chair!

The Re-Farmer

Kitty status, and shopping for Mom

August 22, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today, we were expecting another hot day. There was a small potential chance for rain in the morning, but not a lot.

It was also my day to help my mother with her groceries, so was outside, watering the garden, earlier than usual.

It was a rather strange thing to start hearing thunder, and find myself hoping I could finish watering the garden before the rain hit!

I did get the main garden area watered, then emptied the last of the rain barrel to water the old kitchen garden. I did have an adorable surprise with that, though!

I’ve got two watering cans that I fill and bring with me to whatever section I’m working on. As I was reaching down to pick the second watering can up, something was looking at me!

There, clutching the opening of the watering can, was a green tree frog – on the inside of the can!!!

I tried to carefully get it out, but it let go and dropped into the water, instead. So I emptied the can on the wattle weave bed as quickly as I could. I ended up having to turn the can upside down and shaking it to get the frog out! Thankfully, it was none the worse for it, and soon hopped away.

Gosh, tree frogs are so adorable!

The girls, meanwhile, took care of eye baby. Now that we are out of eye drops, and the antibiotics are given in the evening, this just making sure she got fed supplemented cat soup with the modified bottle, then an eye washing before setting her outside.

The bottle feeding can get a bit messy.

We’re using a nipple that is cut back for a wider opening, but the cat soup sometimes still has chunky bits just big enough to block the opening. Which means, every now and then, it spontaneously plugs, then unplugs – all over the kitten! On top of that, once she’s done, she just closes her mouth and turns her face away, and ends up with cat soup all over her face.

When it started raining harder and I had to come inside, I discovered one of the other kittens, cleaning eye baby up!

The other kitten was very enthusiastically grooming that cat soup, out of her fur!

She seemed to be quite content with the attention.

In the other slideshow photos, there’s that little fluffy cat. She is, if I remember correctly, one of the late litter of eight kittens from last year. She is also the one that dropped her litter of kittens all over the yard and abandoned them. I’m really working on trying to get her socialized at least a bit. If we can catch her to get her fixed next month, that would be awesome! So far, she has started to allow me to pet her after I’ve set food out in the kibble house. She prefers to eat there over the other areas we scatter kibble. Outside the kibble house and no food around, though, she still won’t let me near her.

As for the others, I tried to do a head count this morning, counting both adults and kittens. I think I counted 31, but when I counted again, I got 29. Broccoli and her two were not there; I saw them later at the old garden shed. There were a couple of regular adults that weren’t there, either, including Brussel. There is at least one kitten that has gone “missing”. The fluffy orange one that showed up with Baby Hypotenose – the two kittens that Sprout finally brought to the house. I have been seeing Baby Hypotenose a fair bit, but its orange sibling just disappeared. If this is another loss, that would be the last of the orange kittens gone. We have one orange tabby and one orange and white among the younger adult males, plus the Grand Old Lady, Rolando Moon, and that’s it for orange cats. Quite the change from when we first moved here, and almost all the outside cats were orange tabbies!

Since I was out so early this morning, I actually had time for breakfast before I had to leave for my mother’s. I timed it so that I could pick up lunch for us. She likes the dinners that the grocery store sometimes has available, but there were none today. Which I didn’t mind. I was really looking forward to some Chinese food.

They were closed.

They weren’t supposed to be closed. All the signs said they should have been open, and I could see lights on inside, but the door was locked. I ended up going around the back of the motel the restaurant is in and went in through the bar. The lights were on in the dining room, but the kitchen and back areas were all dark. I asked the woman working the bar before leaving, and she had no idea why they weren’t open.

I ended up going to the gas station to get some of their fried chicken and wedges, getting there just as they were bringing out the first batch of chicken for the day.

Which was good – theirs is the best fried chicken! – but I really was looking forward to Chinese food! 😄

Then I had the problem of getting into my mother’s building.

It was locked!

This has happened only once before. The main doors are usually never locked, even overnight. These are also the accessible doors, with the automatic door openers; another reason for those doors to never be locked!

I do have keys but, for some reason, the outside door key have never worked. It almost works – the lock did start to turn, but towards the “lock” position, not the “unlock” position. I have no idea why it doesn’t work. My mother’s own key does sometimes stick, too, but nothing like this! I ended up having to phone my mother to let her know I was at the door closer to her apartment, but couldn’t get in.

So my mother had to toodle over with her walker to let me in. These doors have a tiny vestibule between an unlockable inner door and the always locked from the outside outer door. My mother was able to open the inside door, then had to use her walker to block it open so she could push the bar on the outside door top open it for me. (When coming in from the outside, there is barely enough room in the vestibule for her walker, and for the door to swing open. It still ended up hitting one of her wheels, but she prefers it over using the main doors.)

The alternative would have been to make her walk down the hall and through the lobby to reach the main doors, and still have to fight to open two doors. The inside one, at least, would have opened with the push of a button, but the walk would have been harder on my mother than opening the doors closer to her apartment.

What a pain!

Once inside, I set things up and we had our lunch. While moving things aside, I saw she had a notice of inspection for bedbugs again. She told me, it was just slid under her door this morning. It looks like they will be back on the 28th. I looked up the calendar on my phone to confirm what day that falls on, while she quickly tucked the letter away before I could read the rest!

It falls on the day I’ll be making my first stock up shopping trip to the city.

My mother is not happy about them coming by again. The last time they did, she didn’t get up to let them in because she wasn’t feeling well. She did yell out verbal permission for them to come in, but they would not. She doesn’t quite understand that she risks eviction by constantly finding ways to avoid them! She doesn’t appear to have bedbugs, but if her neighbours do, that can change very quickly, and they are required to check a certain number of times since the last time they sprayed.

Once we had our lunch, we went over her shopping list. There were a few things I needed to clear up. She writes her list in a sort of mix of Polish and English, and her English words are spelled phonetically – in Polish! She then makes little drawings of the things she has on the list, but sometimes that doesn’t make it any clearer! I mean, a sour cream container and a yogurt container are basically the same. 😄

This time, she had flour on her list – it was even spelled correctly in English! – but the doodle was quite clearly and ear of corn. Corn flour? My mother doesn’t use corn flour, but that’s what she called it.

She meant corn meal, which she uses all the time.

I did explain to her that corn meal and corn flour are different things. I don’t think she’ll remember, though, as she’s never seen corn flour, so she doesn’t have any sort of connection to make to help her remember. Not that it’s a problem, but I did want to clarify, based on what she had on her list!

Her list was very short, so I asked a few questions and a few more things were added to it. She had the newest flier, too, so we went over some of the sale items, and talked about possibly substitutions. There was no meat on the list, and the only thing that could be considered a protein was the cheese I ended up adding to her list after going through the flier with her. She insisted that she still had plenty. I am suspicious, though, as she has increasingly tried to blame eating meat or “heavy foods” (she has her own definition of what that is!) on her not feeling well.

At one point, she started telling me that she feels like she’s dying, every night, and had considered getting me to take her to the clinic in the nearby hospital. She’s also becoming obsessed with an appointment with the “new doctor” that’s there, because it conflicted with a home visit appointment she had on the same day. I was the one who cancelled the appointment for her, so I knew that it was not with the new doctor. It was with a nurse practitioner. It was my sister that had taken her in to the clinic, but no one was available to see my mother, so they made this appointment – and forgot about the date. Neither of them seemed to realize that the appointment was with whoever was available, not the new doctor.

I suggested that if she wanted to see a doctor, I could make an appointment with her current one for her. She actually yelled angrily at me, NO! I told her, you’ve got a good doctor, and she laughed and made a comment about the doctor talking to the computer instead of to her. I told her, the doctor was reading what she was looking up on her file. Some people tend to think out loud, or read out loud, as they do that. I was with my mother during her last appointment, and could see that’s what she was doing; as she read through my mother’s file, she would sometimes say parts of it out loud, very quickly. It’s entirely possible the doctor doesn’t even notice that she’s doing it.

When I explained that to her, my mother finally just said, “I’m scared of black people.”

*sigh*

With how hard it is to find a doctor these days – especially when living outside the city – it’s aggravating that she’s allowing her racism to deny herself the health care she’s demanding!

As we talked, I brought up again, she needs a hospital bed, so she can sleep upright.

Which is when she started saying it was her stomach – her digestive system (she literally does not understand what is or isn’t part of her digestive system, or where the organs are located in her body) – that she now thinks is the cause of her troubles, then tried to make connections with eating “heavy food”, like the chicken we just ate…

I asked her, what does that have to do with her breathing? She’s been complaining that she can’t breathe at night, and that’s why she feels like she’s dying. Now, she says it’s her stomach?

I tried to ask more questions, but she changed the subject.

*sigh*

It’s frustrating that she is so all over the place with how she feels, and latch onto things as the “cause” of all her problems, usually because of something she heard on TV, or one of the people in her building saying. But when solutions are offered – like having a hospital bed so she can sleep more upright – she refuses.

Other than this, though, things went smoothly. I worked out what she needed on her list, then did the shopping for her.

Once everything was put away, I stayed a bit longer, but was feeling incredibly sleepy. The overcast skies and rainy weather has that effect on me. I still had to go back to the grocery store for a water jug refill – just one, for now – before going home, too.

Once that was done and I got home, I went for a nap almost right away. It seems I really needed that sleep, too!

As for right now, the skies are clear again and it’s sunny out there, so I’m looking forward to my evening rounds. Meanwhile, as I was writing this, my younger daughter came in to let me know that she was able to harvest the last of the garlic for me! They were getting a bit over due!

For now, they’re laid out on the freezer in the old kitchen. Once the dirt has dried out a bit more, we’ll brush them off, trim them and string them up to hang with the others in the garage.

As for the cat isolation shelter build in the garage, I won’t be doing anything on it today. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow. Mostly, though, I think I’ll have to go through the sheds and garage again, so see what materials I can find to continue the build, until I have the budget to buy the materials I need to finish it.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to find what I need and get this finished soon. I will have to double check with the Cat Lady to see what date she has booked for us, for a spay or neuter (depending on what cat we can catch!). If we end up with a male, we won’t need the isolation shelter, but if we can get that fluffy little cat, or one of the other mamas, that would be idea.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

Medical

We have cat food again!

A pretty good day

Morning babies

Our 2024 Garden: a morning harvest, plus another long day!

What a long day!

So many distractions, I almost forgot!

Morning harvest, Button update, and my mother is determined to get herself evicted

The day so far; a tiny surprise harvest, and why am I so tired?

Garden stuff, seeing a friend, and lysine is finally in… but it’s not the same!

Kitty status, and shopping for Mom

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