The last time I did a head count, the highest number I got was 40, which is insane enough.
I know at least two, maybe three, are winter returns, but at least one of them, probably two, was part of the headcount of 40. Judgement is the most recent return.
Which means we’ve got perhaps another 9 extra cats from… somewhere.
Whatever cats these are, there is nothing unique about them to set them apart from our regular adults, and I’m pretty sure none of the “extras” are kittens. I did spot a tabby yesterday that I thought looked unfamiliar, but I couldn’t get a good enough look at it before it disappeared behind a cat shelter. We have quite a few grey and brown tabbies. Then there are the “printer babies”. The white ones with grey or black patches on them. Adults and kittens. Very few of them are friendly enough to be individually identifiable. There are some tuxedos, including one that showed up I’m not sure about. One of the returns is the mostly black cat that had an infected eye. If I can see his face, I can identify him by his one eye that’s half discoloured.
We have got to reduce this population!
I messaged the rescue about it, just out of shock. There’s nothing they can do at this point. None of the shelters are accepting intakes right now. They’re too full, and not enough people are willing to adopt a rescue. That doesn’t even take into account the people that either back out at the last minute, or return cats they decided they’re not up to caring for.
The Cat Lady said, ideally, we’d want to get down to a maximum of 15, which would be great, but if cats are just showing up from elsewhere, there’s not much we can do about it.
At this point, we need to seriously look at getting a cull done. It’s not sustainable. Not to mention expensive. I just bought 160 pounds of kibble, just for the outside cats from the feed store, today. That was well over $200 – and with this many cats, unless we find ways to supplement with other food, which I’m looking into, will not last the month. Maybe 3 weeks.
I keep forgetting I have a donation button. If anyone is able to help out – and I certainly understand that most of us are really hurting with the cost of living increases right now – you can click on the button at the top of the page, or below.
Feel free to share the donation link, too. 100% of donations go toward the care and feeding of the yard cats, and anything at all is greatly appreciated.
We had a lovely mild morning today. We supposedly had rain last night, but nothing noticeable. I’m going to have to go back out to water the remaining garden beds today.
As I write this, my various weather apps tell me we are at 15C/59F. I just made a trip to the town north of us. There’s a bank with one of those signs with a rotating display that includes time and temperature. According to that, it was 21C/70F.
I’d say the sign is right and the apps are wrong!
I did a harvest this morning and completely forgot to take a photo of it! There were some Chocolate Cherry and Black Cherry tomatoes to harvest, an orange bell pepper and a hot pepper, a surprising amount of beans, and some San Marzano tomatoes.
What I did not harvest was melons, but something did!
Considering the size and weight of the melon, and the fact that it was taken out of a raised bed and into the middle of a path, I’d say racoons did this.
This is all that’s left of my kohlrabi, after the flea beetles were done with it.
*sigh*
Tonight, we’re supposed to drop down to 4C/39F. Not quite frost temperatures, but we’ll definitely cover the two beds where it’s even possible to do so. I don’t think we’ll harvest the last of the other things until tomorrow, though. I’m taking a chance with that, but we’ll see how it goes. Just watering the garden really well will help things handle the temperatures a little bit.
It’s all one day at a time in the garden, this time of year!
All the areas needing mesh were done, with the mesh first tacked on with staples. For the short sides, I started securing the mesh with wood lath across the bottoms. I then spent a bit of time working out how best to start framing for the clear panels that will be sliding doors, while further securing the mesh on the bottom half.
The clear panel, which still needs to be cut to the sizes I need, is a quarter inch thick. The wood lath is also a quarter inch thick, though individual pieces have variations in width, so that will work out perfectly for sliding channels.
For this side, I added long, vertical pieces of wood that would both secure the wire mesh on the bottom, while also starting to form a frame around the opening that the clear plastic will be covering. This is so that the panel will slide towards the back, over the section that’s insulated and covered.
If you click through to the next photo, though, you’ll see my problem on this side.
The floor boards were placed flush with the edge on the other side. A couple of boards were slightly longer. When covering the section on this side, I took advantage of that and rested the first piece of wood lath right on top of the parts that stuck out, then worked my way up.
There was no way a door panel could slide across with those there. Mostly, it was the one piece that stuck out the furthest, but a second piece had to be dealt with, too.
Thankfully, I have a pull saw with a very thin and flexible blade – a Bear Saw, which I think is a model, not a brand. You can see how flexible the blade is in the next photo of the slideshow. I was able to saw off the parts that stuck out, then use a rasp to take off any bits that were left.
In the last photo, you can see the rest of the framing in place. Some of this will be hidden from view when the sliding channels are complete.
For the sliding door’s channel, I will need to set pieces across the top and bottom, positioned so they will be flush with the panel. I’ll need to find the thickest and straightest pieces for this part!
I am pretty sure I’ll need to add more framing pieces, but I won’t be positive until I have the panels as a guide.
I’ll probably give a bit of extra space for the panel at the top, so it’s not too snug – but not too much space, or it’ll wobble when being opened and closed. Once those pieces are fixed in place – and I’m sure the panel can slide over the covered and insulated section unobstructed – two more vertical pieces will be added that will overlap the top and bottom of the panel, holding it in place.
If we need to remove the panel for some reason, it can be slid right out one end.
The mesh for this section was just a square, but I made sure not to secure it too high. There needs to be enough space for the clear panel that will cover the front of the top level to have the overlap it needs to be screwed in place.
The covered section is over the opening to the second level, so there are no floor boards at the bottom. The bottom piece of wood covering the insulation was lined up with the horizontal frame piece, which made the whole thing slightly lower than the cover on the other side. That gave me room to put a long piece of wood lath across the top as well as the bottom. The rest was done pretty much the same as the other side.
That was it for today. Tomorrow, we need to get the table saw set up so we can cut the clear panel pieces.
Once the clear panels are in place, the door/ramp on the bottom will be installed. Last of all, the roof will be assembled. I have some handles I can add to the sides to make it easier to move it around, too. They were meant for something else, but are needed here, more.
After that, it’s done until we can pick up more paint! With or without paint, though, we can bring it over to the house and set it where the cats can start checking it out and getting used to it.
We’ll need to pick up more heat lamps so that we can have one to set up inside the upper level of the isolation shelter during the winter. Even with insulated walls, the plastic room and clear panels have no insulation. They may be good for passive solar heat during the day, but not very good at night!
I just checked online and the lamps I had in my wishlist are on sale right now, so I’ve just ordered a pair of clamp lamps and a pair of ceramic heat bulbs. I think we still have a timer laying around, too. If it has a light sensor, we can set it up like the one in the cat shelter, so that it will automatically turn the heat on at dusk, then off during the day.
Hopefully, the cats will get to enjoy the shelter soon. Especially the ladies we’re building it for, and their post trap and spay recovery period!
Judgement has always been great with the kittens, so it was no surprise to find him snuggled up with a couple.
The black and white is another one we can’t get close to. I think the other one is Magda. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, with so many similar kittens!
So many adorables out there!
The outside cats got their version of cat soup this evening. I adjusted the ingredients, using more dry kibble and letting it soak longer in hot water before blitzing it with the immersion blender. There was also a couple of cans of wet cat food, lysine and powdered pumpkin seed.
They absolutely loved it, and licked the food trays clean. The skunks and racoons will have nothing to steal tonight!
I first spotted him yesterday evening, though my daughters saw him earlier. It’s been weeks since I saw him last, just once, and more weeks before then.
Wow, is he ever hungry, too! He doesn’t seem too thin this time, though. Sometimes, when they come back in the fall, they look like they’ve been starved for some time.
Hopefully, he will be staying this time, at least for the winter.
I’ve started to do something different for the outside cats. Just for a few nights now. When I make the cat soup for the inside cats, I’m not making an extra soupy soup for the outside cats. It’s mostly warm water with only a couple of cans of wet can food (we can’t afford to do more), some lysine and pumpkin seed powder. I also add some dry kibble to the water to soften up a bit, then divide it out among all the liquid proof trays.
The outside cats absolutely love it.
Best of all, if there is any kibble left in the feeding trays, it all gets eaten up. They literally lick the trays clean, so any lysine that didn’t stick to the kibble from the morning feed and settled on the bottom gets eaten up, too.
There isn’t any kibble at all left for the skunks and racoons to steal, by the time they’re done!
Things are getting chilly out there. It’s time to get the sun room set up for the winter, open up and clean out the cat house – and get that isolation shelter finished! Hopefully, I’ll finally be able to work on that again, today.
Then there’s all the stuff to get done around the house and garden, too.
With today being a new holiday, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I first checked to make sure Costco would even be open, and they were, for slightly shorter hours. They will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, which is the second Monday of October – 2 weeks from today – so I figured it would either be pretty dead, or insanely busy.
It turned out to be insanely busy.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I left for the city before having breakfast. I considered eating at the Costco, but there really isn’t anything they have at their cafeteria that I can eat, anymore. I don’t care for their hot dogs or pizza, and the coating on their chicken strips has just enough spicy heat that I can’t tolerate it.
There is a mall nearby, though, so I figured I could go to the food court.
Nothing was open, yet. With the holiday, they weren’t going to open until 11, and I was there shortly after 10.
The Dollarama beside the food court was open, though, so I went to see what I could find there. I ended up getting one of those little snack packs with a tin of chicken salad, a few crackers and a stick for a spoon, plus a drink.
That actually tided me over until I got home!
The parking area for the mall shared access to a Canadian Tire, so I went there, next, and got 4 bags of stove pellets for the litter boxes. That came out to $33.56
My next stop was the Costco gas station. The price of regular there was $1.229/L, while the other stations in the city were generally $1.299. Much to my surprise, there was almost no one at the gas station, and I was able to get to a pump right away. I was at a bit under 3/4 of a tank, and filling cost $41.03.
I always reset my trip meter after filling at Costco, so I have an idea of how much we drive in a month. When I reset it, we were at just over 2400km – about 1000km more than usual for us! All that extra driving I’ve been doing for my mother really added up!
With how quickly I got through the gas station, I figured the store couldn’t be too bad!
Boy, was I wrong.
This is when I finally got in line. This is near the back of the store and, pretty much immediately after I got in line, so many more people got in line behind me, it had to do a switchback into the other aisle. When I got to the end of this aisle, The end of the line was already past the same end of the other aisle!
As the line moved forward, I found myself next to a second line. I knew there would be a third one – two for the cashiers, one for the self check. Self checkout being limited to 12 items or less. I hoped I was in the correct line and figured I was, since just about everyone else in the line with me had larger cart loads.
I was wrong.
The line I was next to eventually split off around the other side of the centre displays. So that one line was actually for the two lines to the cashiers.
The line I was in turned out to be the self checkout line.
Thankfully, someone in the other line let me in in front of him. Once we got to the cash desks, he ended up getting to a cashier before I did, so that worked out well for him, at least!
The weird thing is, it seemed as if more people were standing in line to pay than were shopping! The shopping itself wasn’t all that busy. The only real problem I had there was trying to get to places while pushing a flat cart. I kept having to navigate around people in line!
This time around, I didn’t put the cat supplies on a separate bill, as most of the dry kibble is going to be purchased at feed stores.
Everything all together, including pet supplies, came out to $680.88 after taxes.
Yeah. That far from full flat cart load is almost $700.
This is what we got today.
What you can’t see in the photo above, among the larger items, is two cases of canned cat food and a box of puppy pads.
For bread products, I only got four packs of tortilla warps.
Hhmmm… I could have sworn those were supposed to be on sale for $7.99, not regular price at $9.99 I don’t trust my memory for that right now, though.
There’s a case of Coke Zero in there, along with laundry detergent, a giant box of ramen noodles, and a big bag of paper towels. Not the ones we usually get, but these were on sale. We got facial tissues and toilet paper, too. There’s a bag of Basmati rice, frozen perogies, and a variety pack of sliced meats.
Among the smaller items in the cardboard box, we got 5 pounds of butter. I picked up a couple of 2pk salad mixes, whipping cream, cream cheese, goat cheese and a block of Old Cheddar cheese.
There’s a bag of hazelnuts, a jar of olives and a jar of Kirkland brand mayonnaise, which is a bigger jar for a lower price than the Hellman’s we usually get.
I got some pickerel filets for the girls, which were on sale, plus some lean ground beef. That ground beef… I can’t believe it cost more than the pork loin, which has a lot more meat! The package of pork chops was about the same weight as the ground beef.
Remember when ground beef was the affordable meat?
I picked up a 3 pack of Spam, a big bag of tortilla chips for my husband, a double flat of eggs and a giant pumpkin pie. While standing in line, close to the cashier, I threw in a box of Sweet and Salty granola bars, too.
That’s it.
There was stuff that was on my list that I didn’t get, because I was already going above budget for today. I decided to go for it since some of the items – the paper towels and facial tissue in particular – will last us a couple of months.
This time around, when I was offered assistance in loading, I accepted. When I got water refills yesterday, I used the wagon to the house. After unloading and starting to take the wagon back to the garage, I stopped to reach for something my daughter had, but my hand got caught in the handle of the wagon. I twisted several fingers, with one being twisted the most. That finger it still hurting.
Which puts me in a bit of a pickle. The nerve damage in my left elbow means I have to be careful lifting or carrying anything heavy with my left arm. The finger I injured is in my right hand, and I now have almost no grip strength in that hand because of it. On top of all that, our current temperature whiplash has resulted in every joint in my body being stiff and sore, including all my finger joints.
I nearly dropped that jar of olives, three times, because I couldn’t hold it!
So… yeah. I got help loading the truck.
Mostly, I was bagging things in our hard sided grocery bags. I brought ice packs to use in the insulated bags. While I was doing that, the guy helping me loaded up all the stuff too big to put into a bag. He started having trouble working around the litter pellets, so I brought out our garden claw tool that we keep in the truck and used that to push the bags further in. He was really happy and commented that they need to have something like that handy at the store for times like this!
That done, I could finally start heading home.
Before I left, I got a message from my SIL, letting me know my brother was coming out today, along with the guy with the triple axle trailer. They decided to move some decorative limestone blocks they have out here, and all of it together was way too heavy for their trailer. My brother had one more antique looking piece of equipment he wanted to bring out, too.
I have no idea what it is.
I thought I was miss my brother entirely, but he was still here when I got home, though the guy with the big trailer had already left.
Before I even started to unload, I went to say hello – and goodbye! He was gone before we finished unloading the truck. At least I got a hug in, first!
I unloaded most things to my daughter at the door, then she took care of putting things away while I finished unloading the larger items going straight into the old kitchen. Then I had to feed the outside cats, to get them away from the truck, so I could park it.
By the time I got back, everything was put away.
Except the pumpkin pie.
There was no room in the fridge for it!
So… we just had to sacrifice ourselves and eat it. Along with some whipped cream my daughter made. 😄😄
But not before I finally had some real food. I’d got the Crockpot going last night, with half of one of our winter squash on the bottom, and a whole chicken on top. The squash was so big that, even using just half, there was hardly any room for the chicken, even after spatchcocking it. Once everything was seasoned, I covered the top with parchment paper then pushed the lid on. It still couldn’t close all the way but, as the squash cooked, the chicken sank down. During the night, when my older daughter checked on it for me, she was eventually able to remove the parchment paper.
It was really nice having that to come home to!
I can’t say I like this particular squash all that much, though. Of the two we’ve tried so far, they were both… okay. Not as tasty as the Banana or Candy Roaster squash we grew last year, nor as good as the Red Kuri/Little Gem we’ve grown before.
But that’s why we tried this Wild Bunch mix this year – so we can taste, without having too many of one type we might not like!
Anyhow…
The last of the stock up shopping is now done, and I am so glad that’s over with! We’ll just need to get more dry kibble at the feed store, and fresh stuff locally, throughout the month.
Meanwhile, the winds have been wreaking enough havoc that we’ve lost power, momentarily, a few times, so I’d better publish this before we have another one and my computer gets shut down again!
That rain we were supposed to be getting right now has been pushed back a couple more hours. Time enough for me to do my evening rounds!
I believe this is the one the girls have named Magda. Such a sweety! She doesn’t like to be carried, but I discovered that if I use the bottom of my shirt to make a pouch, she will happily go for a ride in it. 😊
While checking the garden beds, I was happy to see this, in the high raised bed.
Click through for a second image. These are the peppers that are supposed to be more of an orangey yellow, and they are finally turning colour!
I hadn’t planned to harvest anything this morning, as I decided to go into the city for our Costco shopping trip. I did end up gathering a couple of melons that had fallen off their vines. One of them looked like a mouse had tried to chewing through it. It didn’t get very far, though. I’m sure one of our yard cats had something to do with the limited damage!
Meanwhile, we figured out why my husband’s disability pay came in earlier than expected. It turns out we have a new statutory holiday. National Truth and Reconciliation Day. I hadn’t seen anything about it anywhere, including the usual places I would have expected to. I don’t see it as being a particularly popular holiday, since it’s basically just a pander to activist types pushing the residential school/mass graves hoax. They have no interest in truth, and certainly don’t want reconciliation, and if their agenda end up hurting their own people, they don’t particularly care about that, either. Oh, I’d better watch myself, though. If our Prime Dictator has any say in the matter, being a “residential school denier” will be an arrestable offence.
But I digress.
As lovely as it was out there this morning, today has worked out to be another very windy day! We’re going to have a lot of clean up in the yard of small branches – not large ones, thankfully, nor any fallen trees this time.
We’re supposed to get a bit of rain in about an hour, and our overnight temperatures are supposed to drop to 7C/45F tonight. When I go my evening rounds, I’ll have to remember to drop the sides of the plastic “greenhouse” we put around the eggplant and pepper bed. Hopefully, the winds will have died down by then, and the box frame won’t become a sail! It’s tied down really well, with means the wood would probably break before it came loose from the stakes. !!
While tonight and tomorrow night are supposed to be pretty mild, our forecast has changed once again. We’re now looking at 3C/37F in a couple of night, and 0C/32F the night after.
We’ll have to make sure to harvest all the green tomatoes before then! It’s a shame we have no way to cover them, because overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up again after that.
Or… the forecast could change again, and we won’t be getting any frost yet at all!
In the colander are what might be the last of the Purple Beauty peppers – they have had a lot of strangely small, thin walled peppers. There’s also a Sweet Chocolate pepper in there, as well as a few hot peppers. There are a couple of eggplants, and all three types of beans, some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, plus a few San Marzano tomatoes.
In the bin are the Former de Couer and Black Cherry tomatoes. I’m picking most of them a bit on the green side, to get some of the weight off the plants.
Yesterday, we were able to get some things into the freezer.
I grabbed all the bell peppers and prepared them for freezing. If you click through to the next image, you can see them laid out in a couple of gallon sized freezer bags.
Earlier, I cut up enough melons to fill two baking trays. Those will be bagged up later.
While chopping up the peppers, I took advantage of my husband coming by and taste testing the four different kinds of bell peppers we had (the last variety still hasn’t turned colour yet).
His conclusion:
They all had that “bell pepper” taste, but they were very mild – as in there wasn’t a lot of flavour. The exception was the yellow pepper. Those have much thick walls, to it was great to hear that.
Something to keep in mind when deciding what varieties to grow next year.
In other things, we’ve got another windy day today. It’s supposed to continue through to tomorrow. So far, I’ve found found a few downed branches, but no fallen trees! We’re going to have to keep an eye/ear out for the next while.
I did end up going out this morning. My older daughter is feeling sick today and didn’t have the energy to cook. So she sprung for take out for all of us! Which worked out fine, as it gave me a chance to refill a couple of the 18.9L water jugs in town.
We’re supposed to reach a high of 26C/79F today, while the overnight low is, remarkably, supposed to be 21C/70F!
Tomorrow night, however, the overnight low is supposed to drop to 7C/45F, so we’ll need to make sure to drop the sides of the plastic around the eggplant and hot pepper bed. In a few days, we’re supposed to drop to 1C/34F. The eggplant and pepper bed can be covered, but we’ll have to pick all the green tomatoes, and probably the last of the melons and squash, too, since we have no way to protect those from frost. The high raised bed has a cover on it to protect the peppers from deer, and support any peppers tall enough to grow through it. We can use that to hold protective covers off the plants.
We’re 19 days past our average first frost date, so I am certainly not complaining. Still, it would be awesome if the weather decided to say milder for a bit longer!
After the last couple of days, I plan to take it relatively easy today.
Part of “taking it easy” for me includes finally doing my morning rounds as usual!
Since I’d gathered a larger harvest yesterday, I didn’t expect to gather anything today. I did find a couple of things to pick though. A handful of Carminat purple beans, a single green Seychelle bean, a hot pepper and…
The clusters still look quite green, but I noticed some of them had already started to drop seeds among the melons in the trellis bed. So I grabbed a clean bucket and tried just shaking the seeds into it. Things were still too damp with dew, though, so I broke off the seed heads that were starting to drop seeds and dumped them into the bucket whole.
Quite a few seeds were dropped into the bed, so I think we can expect a fair number of self sown onions in there in the spring!
There are still some seed clusters that are very green that got left on the plants to be gathered later. For now, the bucket of seed heads is in the house, sitting in a sunny spot in the cat free zone. We’ll collect more seeds after the seed heads have dried off.
I made no effort to separate types of onions in here. There was really no practical way to do so. There would be only two types of onions – a red and a yellow – that we had tried growing last year. At this point, if we are going to start growing onions from our own seeds, there isn’t as much need to keep track of varieties, or even keep the seeds separate. It’s not like we’re going to be packaging them up for sale or anything like that.
Which means that when we start seeds for next year’s garden, we’ll be having Onion Surprise. 😁
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.
