It could be worse! Plus, they almost found a way, but… not

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I’m back from getting my mother’s car checked and partially worked on.

My first stop was the clinic to drop off the thumb drive with my husband’s medical files, only to find everything but the emergency was closed (the clinic is in the same building as the hospital). Saturday was “Truth and Reconciliation Day”, so they were treating today, Monday, like a statutory holiday.

Thankfully, the pharmacy was not closed. I went there to update my husband’s file with his new doctor’s name and mentioned it was closed. The pharmacist said they thought it might be, because it had been so quiet for them today! The new doctor still can’t refill my husband’s painkillers, though. They are opioids, which means he’s going to need to get a new, hand written prescription in triplicate to bring in. Which his new doctor can’t give him until she gets his medical records.

When I mentioned the doctor’s name, the pharmacist knew exactly who it was, since this person is now her own doctor, too!

After I was done at the pharmacy, I took the car through a car wash, then dropped it off at the garage. I was more than an hour early, which was fine.

I was just getting out of the car when my phone started ringing. Which always surprised me, because I almost never use my phone as a phone! It came up as “suspected spam”, but I tried answering anyway. I think I got hung up on or disconnected somehow. Our mechanic was outside and started walking over to talk to me. He had just talked with the lady and the financing company, and the call would have been from her!

She had called him about that truck we tried for. While my husband has no current photo ID, we did sent two older ones; his old driver’s license and his Metis card for this province (when we moved away, the Metis Federation in our new province wouldn’t recognise him as Metis unless he paid them to do another genealogy, so we didn’t bother). The finance lady suddenly realized what that second ID was and thought she’d be able to take the taxes off the purchase. That would have made the monthly payments at the maximum we could afford, but we could have done it!

Alas, it was not to be. My husband not Status Indian. He doesn’t have the number needed to be tax free. I just double checked. Metis and Inuit are not eligible for tax exemptions. Which is ridiculous, since there are people with no First Nations blood in them at all that are Status, through marriage or adoption.

Ah, well. It would have been nice. I really appreciate that they are trying so hard to get us a vehicle in our budget!!!

After dropping off the keys, I went for lunch at the nearby Chinese restaurant. We don’t normally go there, as it’s inside a hotel, and we tend to forget it exists. They have an awesome dim sum menu, though. This time, I had a combo that included steamed pork buns. They were the lightest, fluffiest, pillow-iest pork buns I’ve ever had!

When I was done, it was still early, but I saw the car was in one of the bays and no one was around, so I went inside. They were all eating lunch, and were going to look at it next, so I popped over to the grocery store for a bit, then just sat outside at one of their picnic tables with a drink. By the time I got to the garage, the car was done.

The air filter has been changed. My brother and I had no idea when it had been changed last, so I had to ask how it looked. He said that it looked really clean – until he knocked against it and clouds of gravel dust came off of it! The final bill on that was just under $65, which isn’t too bad.

The spark plugs, however, need to be replaced and those had to be ordered in. They’ll arrive tomorrow, but I won’t bring the car in again until Thursday. That will be just under $175

Apparently, Canadian money doesn’t exist in Word Press’ free image library.

Which is a bit over the budget I’d allotted for this, but not by much. It could have been much worse, to be sure! Things were quiet at the time, so we even had a chance to chat a bit.

As I was leaving, though, I turned around and came back. The brakes were screaming! Or, more accurately, the rear end started screaming when I hit the brakes. I noticed this as I was pulling out of the car wash. I told him this and he said to just drive it; it was probably just moisture had gotten into the brake pads. Intellectually, I did know that was likely it, but I am so paranoid about tires in particular! By the time I got home, though, the noise was gone, so that was a relief.

Well now! As I was writing the above, the phone rang. It was the financing lady. We talked about how there is no tax exemption for Metis. She was so disappointed to hear that! As we talked, she even looked through some of the other inventory our mechanic has right now, but that truck was the only one that could have worked out in our budget. I told her our mechanic is still looking; he knows our specific needs, and if anyone can find something, he can. It did give her a chance to ask for a couple of things. She’s got pre-approval for us from a couple of banks, but they have different requirements. One of them is to get our bank records/income statements with his name on it. I sent in pdfs of bill payments/deposits from the last 90 days, but because I logged in to do it, it only shows my name on it, and doesn’t even show that it’s a joint account. It’s messing them up! 😄

Oh, another call from her. There’s a way around having to send another pdf without our banking activity for the past 90 days. We can send a digital void check with his name on it, instead.

The other thing the bank needs is a letter of income from Sun Life. We get those once a year; my husband gets the form at the end of the year to say “yes, I’m still disabled and under the care of a doctor” and around February, we get a letter saying “yup, you’re still disabled; this is how much you’ll be getting every month this year”. The amount changes slightly every year, just as the CPP Disability does.

She is trying so hard to get us a vehicle in our budget! I really appreciate it. Our limitations do not make it easy, that’s for sure. While we were on the phone, she kept trying different things, but in the end, it just didn’t work out with current inventory options.

We were so close…

Ah, well. What will be, will be!

Until then, we have to baby my mother’s car as much as possible, because there is no back up vehicle anymore!

The Re-Farmer

Treed

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Nosencrantz was eagerly among the other cats when I came out to feed them this morning! She even let me pet her, but she was far more interested in food.

I counted 37 again this morning. Unfortunately, that includes Shop Towel. As soon as Nosencrantz saw him in the yard, she did this.

She was still up there when I finished my rounds and came inside. The kibble under the shrine, where she prefers to eat, was already gone, though there were still some in the kibble house. I shooed Shop Towel away, but I know he’ll come back.

I so wish he weren’t aggressive with the other cats. I hate to have to chase away a hungry animal, but he’s already chased off the other toms permanently, and I think some of our own males that have moved on have been driven off by him.

Well, we might be down a few more yard cats, soon. The homesteader we have been buying eggs from has only one cat. Quite a lovely gentleman, too. However, with having feed for so many animals around, she has a lot of mice, and he can’t keep up with catching them all! I’ve offered some of ours. Depending on how her schedule is, I’m hoping she can come over to choose. She would rather have females, as she thinks her cat (yes, he’s fixed, and yes, she’ll fix any cats she takes) would be more accepting of females. Of course, males are the ones that are the most socialized around here! However, there are a couple of females that we can pet fairly regularly. I would much rather we reduced the population of females here, too, since it’s so difficult to get them fixed. I was able to pet Beep Boop this morning, and even feel under her belly, and she has no active nips, making her a good candidate. Adam and Broccoli would also be great to go. I have been able to pet Broccoli while she’s eating, though I couldn’t check to see if she was nursing – she did bring her second litter to the house, and I’ve seen them together, but I’ve never seen her actively nursing them. They definitely are old enough to be weaned. As for Adam… she won’t let us near her at all. She was creche mother for so long, along with Beep Boop, I don’t think she would have gone into a second heat, like Broccoli did. Then there’s Caramel. She’s been an odd one, lately! If I’m going around the cat house, for example, she will run around on the roof, following me, meowing for attention and even grabbing at me to pay attention to her – but when I do, she attacks my hand, scratching and biting! Yet if I pull away, she starts meowing for attention again.

Nosencrantz is another possibility, now that she actually comes up and lets me pet her. She doesn’t want to go indoors anymore. I don’t know how good of a mouser she is, after being indoors for so long, but she would be much happier around fewer cats. Especially to get away from Shop Towel. Plus, she’s already fixed.

I miss her nightly cuddles!

Well, time to get to other things. I’m taking my mother’s car in to the garage today, so I’m leaving much earlier to stop at the clinic and drop off my husband’s medical files, first. Then grab “breakfast” somewhere. Maybe the new Dairy Queen is open by now? If it is, I’ll definitely give it a try.

The Re-Farmer

What a lovely evening!

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And a lovely morning, with faces like this, saying hello.

Unfortunately, he was just in some sort of altercation – I never heard a thing, but my daughter went running outside, earlier. There’s a puncture wound on the paw, but he wasn’t favouring it in any way.

I tried doing a head count this morning. I counted 37! Then I counted again and got 34. So I counted again and got… 34. This count included Nosencrantz (yay!), Rolando Moon (yay!) and Shop Towel (boooooooo!!!). Shop Towel is the likely cause of that puncture wound.

We had a fantastic time, yesterday! Having company for a cook out gave us the excuse to do things that tend to slide, when it’s just for ourselves. One of those things was to empty the fire pit of ashes, level the bottom as much as we could, then re-set the concrete blocks that are there to hold the old oven racks we saved for fire pit cooking, as well as solidly setting up the four fire bricks we found here and there around the property, to set the Dutch Oven on, so the legs won’t sink into the ground. The ashes were dumped near the garden, to later be used in garden beds.

My younger daughter took on the job of getting a fire going, then burning it down to get the coals needed for the Dutch Oven. Since the set up for it is right near the fire itself, one side would be really hot, so she set a timer to rotate the oven every 15 minutes or soo.

It turned out awesome!

The inside of the pot was first rubbed with ghee, which can handle the hot temperatures better than, say, olive oil or normal butter. Some slices of bacon went on the bottom. The beef was seared in a pan before going into the pot – with the legs on the Dutch oven, we can’t do a sear in the pot itself unless it’s been heated over a fire/coals.

Since the meat would need quite a long time to cook, I used whole small onions from the ones we had to harvest early, because they’ve been cat crushed, whole Irish Cobbler potatoes, and big chunks of Uzbek Golden carrots. When we grew the Uzbek carrots last year, like so many other things, they did not grow to their full size. This year, they did much better! The ones I dug up for the pot were big, thick buggers! There are still plenty in the garden.

There’s a whole bulb of garlic in there – all three massive cloves of it! 😄

For seasoning, I used the truffle salt we were gifted with, and I cut up one of the sprigs of fresh pepper and scattered them about. Last off all, I added about a litre of water.

In the future, I’ll have to make sure to add more water. The photo was taken right after the pot was removed from the coals. The cast iron stays hot for a long time, and by the time we were eating, it was getting pretty black against the iron!

I neglected to take a picture of the roasted Pink Banana squash.

We also had hot dog fixings, if anyone wanted to roast some wienies, and if we were really into it, we had burger patties ready and waiting in the fridge, so there was plenty for everyone when company arrived. Especially since they brought pizzas, pie and ice cream! They also were incredibly generous and brought us FOUR big bags of kibble! 9.1kg size bags. Between that and a generous cash donation we received from a dear friend, it’s going to be a huge help with stocking up for the kitties for October.

Oh, and it looks like we have a new favourite local pizza place. They tried a place that opened in a new location recently. They’ve been around for a while, but I had no idea. I’ve walked past the previous location many times, but it was such a hole in the wall, I thought it was somehow part of the Greek restaurant, next door! There were no signs to say it was anything else. I think this new location will be much better for them. People will actually be able to see they exist!

We had a fantastic evening. We even managed to do a walk around the inner yard and garden beds before it got too dark to see.

It gets dark so fast, this time of year!

My husband was able to join us for the cook out for quite a long time. The longest I’ve ever seen him manage in ages. Of course, he then had to go inside and medicate to the gills, and he’s paying for it today, but he got to spent time with his family, and he really, really misses that. We’ve had to turn down invitations to see family simply because it’s so painful for him to travel, and he’d have to leave so quickly. So for us to have some of his family be able to make a last minute visit to our place is really, really special for him.

It was such a perfect night for it, too. Things got pretty hot during the day – our predicted 22C/72F turned out to be 25C/77F – but the evening temperatures were just ideal. Even after our company left, my daughters and I stayed out to tend the fire and let it burn itself down (leaving the most perfect cooking coals, and nothing we needed to cook anymore! 😂), because we just did not want to go inside. I felt ready to go to bed outside, it was so gorgeous! This, on the last day of September, too!

It was a bit disorienting when we did finally make it inside. After hauling everything in, putting things away, I finally started my computer, settled in and…

It was barely past 10:30pm.

It felt like it should have been at least midnight!

We did end up getting a solid rain last night, starting at maybe 4 or 5 am. The forecasts were predicting a thunderstorm today… or maybe tomorrow. Now, I’m seeing more rain in the forecast, but no storms. I’m also now seeing predictions for overnight lows of 0C/32F on Friday, when earlier long range forecasts weren’t expecting anything that low for another couple of weeks. It changed, every time I look a tthe forecasts, it seems!

We shall see.

Anyhow.

We had an absolutely fantastic day yesterday, and such a great visit. I’m so glad they were able to come out!

The Re-Farmer

Things to come…

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One bonus of having company: we do stuff we don’t take the time for, if it’s just us. Like…

… roast some pink banana squash.

Or use the Dutch oven…

… to make a pot roast.

Everything but the meat, we grew ourselves.

The squash is in the oven, and the pot roast is on coals right now.

Time to go and get some booze.

The Re-Farmer

Stock up shopping: small Costco trip and vehicle update

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This is what $452.10 looks like.

This is a small shop, as I was too tired to do a large one. Plus, I wanted to focus on getting a few more cook out type things.

Before getting to Costco, I had a few other stops. A quick stop at the gas station, not to get gas, but an energy drink and a couple of small packages of nuts to tide me over until I could get breakfast in the city. While there, I checked messages and chatting with my brother and his wife briefly. The next stop was a side trip along the way, to the medical clinic. I needed to get my husband’s medical files to transfer to his new doctor. Turns out getting the physical copies would have cost more than $80, to cover the cost of printing. It would have been 221 pages.

It would have been a lot more, if his medical files from after he got out of the military hadn’t been lost! It was paper copies only, back then, and the clinic we went to destroyed files if they hadn’t seen the patient for more than 2 years. We have moved out of province again, by then.

So to get it loaded onto a thumb drive cost only $35. I brought one, but she ended up giving me a new one, when she saw my thumb drive had other files on it!

While waiting for that to be done (it took a while to transfer the files!), I chatted with my brother some more. They were going to be done their errands in the city fairly soon, and did I want to meet them for lunch? With another 45 minutes driving time after I got the files, it actually worked out really well.

We had a fantastic time together, of course. My brother had been able to visit my mother yesterday and help her with groceries, among other things. She was out of groceries, but never said a thing to me about needing a shopping trip! One odd thing, though. She’s been complaining to the social workers that come to her building about her glasses. It took a while for my husband to get the straight of it, but she is saying what when she got there, the staff member was behind plastic, eating her lunch (they no longer have those plastic shields), and that she got up right away, grabbed the bag with Mom’s glasses, gave them to her and then all but kicked her out.

Strangely, it sounds like I wasn’t even there, but that could be just the way my brother described what she was saying.

The social worker said that they should have tried the glasses on her and checked them, etc. My mother says they didn’t.

They did. They took really good care of her, even going out of their way to accommodate her mobility issues as much as possible!

Then she said something about the lady being Arabic.

The dentist she went to recently was Arabic. Not the people at the eye clinic.

So basically, my mother is just making things up, because she has suddenly decided she doesn’t like her glasses. And she doesn’t like her glasses, because the new prescription didn’t make her headaches go away. We even had the conversation about that; if her old prescription were the problem, the headaches would go away, but if her glasses were NOT the problem, that meant something else was causing them.

Not that we got that far in our conversation. Since I was the one who brought her there, helped her come in, spoke with the staff together with her, watched them make super sure her glasses were sitting right on her face and adjusting them for her, I could confirm that what she is saying now is pure BS.

I’d be tempted to say that this is a sign of cognitive decline in my mother but, to be honest, she’s always done stuff like this.

So that was interesting to find out!

While we were at the restaurant, I got a call from the garage about the truck we were looking into.

As expected, the payments were not in our budget. Even with his knocking the price down, and having the down payment that we could manage right now, it was still almost double what we can afford. Plus, the payments are calculated bi-weekly. We get paid monthly. I would hope they could change it to monthly, because with bi-weekly payments, there would be at least a couple of months out of the year where we would have three payments instead of two.

Ah, well. It was nice to think about, at least. Now that we’ve had a chance to talk about it directly, he knows that we’re good with something like a truck instead of a van, if that’s what he can find in our budget.

My brother and his wife have been trying to help by making various suggestions. One of them has been to try a dealership. They tend to offer no money down, 0% interest financing deals, etc. I finally had a chance to explain that we’ve had bad experiences going through dealerships before. As much as we loved the Grand Caravan, the dealership tried to screw us over. I remember I brought it back shortly after we got it for some warranty work we basically forced them to accept responsibility for. I was sitting in the waiting room, doing some crochet, when the guy who sold it to us came by. He came over with a big smile on his face and made a joke about whether or not I could knit him some socks or something (my fellow crocheters will understand the extra cringe on that), then he looked at my face, recognized me and practically ran away. It was that bad!

Then there was the Uplander. When getting a vehicle so cheap, I could use my debit card to pay for it, you don’t expect to have a perfect vehicle. Beggars can’t be choosers. But you do expect one that is at least safe. That one actually got reported to the regulatory organization, but nothing came of it. We had to put a lot of money into that thing. Once we did, it did really well by us for far longer than it should have, but still…

Then there were the other dealerships we tried. Nothing like talking to someone and saying, “we can afford X payments”, then get a call back saying, “we got a really good deal for you! Fantastic vehicle! Payments are only….” and the amount would be double what we said we could afford.

So… I really would rather not go through a dealership again. I have come to trust our mechanic. He’s taken good care of us.

Once I explained that, they understood.

After lunch, I finally made it to the Costco. With suddenly planning on a cookout tomorrow, that changed what I got a little bit. It was also going to be a smaller shop for now. I’ll do another Costco trip next week some time.

This is what we got. First, the “bottom of the basket” stuff.

case of Coke Zero: $14.69, plus 32¢ enviro fee
Kirkland brand puppy pads: $24.99 These are 30″x23″, rather than the 30″x30″ we’ve been getting at Walmart, but 100 of them cost less than the 50 pack at Walmart. Since I just got a Walmart pack recently, we should be good for puppy pads long enough to not need them anymore, I hope!
canned cat food: $38.99
9kg bags of dry cat food; four of them: $26.99 each
TP: $22.99

Then there was some actual food for humans. 😄

tube of ground beef: $31.49 I plan to partially freeze it, then simply cut rounds off for hamburgers.
fresh sausages: $18.18
eye of round roast: $45.19
three pack of jumbo all beef weiners: $21.99
canned chicken: $17.99 The price on that actually went down, so I got more for the pantry.
tortilla wraps, 2 packages: $9.99 each
ramen noodles, 30 pack: $13.99 I knew this size existed, but it’s the first time I saw them in stock, so I grabbed those for the pantry, too.
double trays of 60 eggs: $18.89
sausage buns, two bags with three packages of 6 buns in them: $6.49 each
hamburger buns, similar bag with three packages inside: $5.29

And that’s our Costco purchase this time. The sub-total was $426.90, plus $25.20 in taxes.

As my purchases were going through, I heard the cashier and the person reloading my flat cart say something about 8 items. I didn’t buy 8 of any one thing, so I asked, 8 what? It was the total number of items still on the cart being confirmed, to make sure they weren’t missing something. I told her, the only time that ever happened, they accidentally charged me for an extra bag of cat food, so I came back (not that I’m remembering this, I think I said the accidentally *under* charged me, by mistake!). So I just got another bag of cat food, instead, so it wasn’t a problem. She asked how many cats we have, so I told her, as best I could when it came to the outside cats. Her response?

Can I move in with you?

😂😂

Turns out, she has “only” six cats, and wants more, but her husband objects. She is also finding many strays that need help, so she tries to leave food out for them, at least. She wants to build shelters for them and stuff, but her husband objects, so I told her a bit about our set up. It’s different when we have access to at least old, scrap lumber to build things with, and it only costs us the paint.

It was nice to chat with a kindred soul. 😁

Once the shopping was done and loaded, I went to fill the gas tank. I was telling my brother, I left with a full tank of gas, and was down a quarter tank by the time I got to the restaurant we were meeting at. My brother, who knows my mother’s car really well, was quite surprised by that. He mused about whether there was a leak somewhere, but if there was, we’d be smelling gas when going into the garage, and we don’t. Hopefully, we’ll find the problem when I take the car in on Monday.

The gas station was really busy, and with good reason! While the rest of the city was at 161.9¢/L for regular gas, which has been getting slightly lower, Costco was at 144.9¢/L Even their premium gas was at 164.9¢/L That’s a huge difference! It ended up costing me just over $23 to fill the tank.

Then it was time to head home, though I did make one more stop at my mother’s town, to use the bank machine. Paying for my husband’s medical file transfer was by cash only, so I needed to replace it, since I used part of the cash I had for the septic guy.

Now that I’m home, I made sure to take the cash out and set it aside, and we can call the septic guy. He is sometimes really fast in responding, so I wanted to make sure I had enough to cover it, plus extra, just in case his rates had to go up again, on hand first!

I’m feeling pretty exhausted right now, but I want to get started on setting up the fire pit area. The picnic table that has to be moved still has tomatoes and onions on it!

Must. Not. Have. Another. Energy drink! 😅

The Re-Farmer

Morning finds

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Before heading to the city, I of course did my morning rounds. I had a few surprises this morning!

The first is, I finally got a good look at the tortie kitten, one of a litter of three that Broccoli started brining over recently.

It’s a long haired kitten! What a beauty, too.

Of course, they all are. I’m biased that way.

Nosencrantz also showed up for breakfast this morning.

She actually came up to the kibble while I was setting it out and let me pet her a bit, but she is still really stand offish. I can see, she is making sure I can’t grab her to pick her up and bring her inside.

*sigh*

There was another surprise in the squash patch.

The downpour we had yesterday seems to have triggered a burst of overnight growth on the sunburst patty pan squash! So many fresh new leaves under the frost damaged ones, and it’s almost the end of September – and still blooming, too!

Speaking of overnight growth, check this out…

This is on a dead maple tree near the fire pit, and it wasn’t there yesterday. We get these regularly, but this is easily the largest and most beautiful cluster of mushrooms I’ve seen since moving here.

We are having good weather today (Friday), and should have a lovely day tomorrow, too – then a thunderstorm on Sunday! We’ve found ourselves with a last minute conversation with family, and it looks like we’ll be doing a cook out tomorrow evening. So today, I’ll be raking the leaves away from the fire pit, so they are not a fire hazard, and setting things up. The old picnic table is so far gone, I don’t think we can safely use it anymore, and I’ll have to snag one of the girls to help me move it, and bring over the folding table we made this year. I’ll also have to empty the fire pit of ashes. It’s been a while!

I’m thinking a pot roast in the cast iron Dutch oven would go over very well!

The Re-Farmer

Voting changes, Vehicle update, and a new acquisition

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I was able to run a number of errands while out today. The predicted rain didn’t start until I was just leaving the gas station to go home. By the time I arrived and got out to open the gate, it was pouring, with plenty of thunder! It was severe enough to cause some power flickers, including one that was enough to cause our computers to shut down, which is always fun. Not.

My first stop was at the advance polling station. I had to look up the location, which turned out to be in an industrial park next to the airport, rather than in town!

Things have really changed since the last election. Our paper ballots of the past have always been a tri-fold ballot, with the only change in dimensions being due to how many candidates were running. In our riding, there was only four this time. There were a number of checks and balances, such as tearing off a strip with a number on it, matching a number on the rest of the ballot, that was kept by the scrutineers, and going through another scrutineer to make sure it was dropped into the ballot box properly, etc.

Well, we do still have paper ballots, which is good. May we never move away from paper ballots! I love my technology, but security is an illusion.

The ballot itself was the size of a sheet of printer paper. It was in a specially shaped folder that covered all but the security info at the top. The scrutineer that gave me my ballot gave me instructions; holding the front of the ballot facing me, she dropped the folder open (the fold was on the bottom) so I could see the candidates list, and I was told to colour in the circle by the name I wanted to vote for. No X’s or check marks. Fill in the circle. Then she made sure to close up the folder again before handing it to me, without ever touching the actual ballot.

At the voting booth, they had a permanent black marker available, rather than the usual pencils. After marking for my candidate, the folder is closed back up again and I took it to the scrutineer that had checked my ID when I came in. She took the ballot by the folder, then placed the part that stuck out into a slot on what looked like a big, office sized printer. It was actually a scanner. The machine grabbed the ballot out of the folder, and she put it aside, having never touched the ballot directly. I could watch the scanning progress on a screen, which did not display the actual vote. Once scanned, the ballot was dropped into the ballot box the machine was resting on. No one had access to the ballot box itself.

Every marked ballot now has both a physical and electronic copy. The machine helps with counting the physical ballots this way, making things faster for the scrutineers.

That done, I continued into town. Since the grocery store where I was going to is across the street from our garage, I went there first, to talk to our mechanic. As I went in, I passed him talking to a couple who were looking at a really nice SUV.

We went into his office and started talking about the financing situation. I told him, I knew it would be hard to find something in that budget limit. We are actually approved for up to $25,000, apparently, but couldn’t possibly afford the payments for that. He said it was be very hard to find a van within the budget, though. He asked if we would be okay with something else. That SUV I had just walked past turned out to be well under our budget!

A vehicle like that would work for us, though would not be ideal. It’s something my husband could get in and out of without hurting himself too much, and the back bench seat folds down and would accommodate his walker, folded up. We would be able to fill it with a larger load than my mother’s car, to be sure, but not as well as a van.

Would we be good with a truck, he asked?

I told him, I’d love a truck! Though we would need on with a cap over the box. My thoughts being on how we were able to fit the riding mower and snow blower in the back of the van, but also needing to protect our large monthly shops from the elements.

He did have a truck available and we went over to take a look at it. It had the extended cab, but the back seats folded up, so we’d be able to fold up and fit my husband’s walker in the back. The short box had a flat cover on it, which I wasn’t sure about, but if the walker fits in the back, it’s not as much of an issue. We’d also be able to load up our Costco shopping (I told him how many bags of cat food we go through!) and it would be protected from the elements. If we had to load some something like the snow blower or riding mower, should we need to, we could just roll up the cover. They wouldn’t be protected, but that should be okay.

It also already has a trailer hitch installed, which is something we would want. The clearance under the truck is higher, so we’d be able to get out of our driveway after a snowfall with less concern. It could be switched from front wheel drive to four wheel drive, and it also automatically adjusts from using 8 cylinders to 4 cylinders on the highway, to save on fuel consumption.

Yeah, it had some rust on the body, but the inside was in good shape, and I really don’t care about the looks.

The price was above budget, but he was going to see how much he could drop it for us, plus we do have a bit we could use as a down payment. Not much, but enough to make a difference. He is going to send info on the truck to the finance company to see if they can work with it and keep the payments to what we can afford. Keeping in mind that whatever those work out to be, we will also have the additional cost of registration and insurance on top of it.

Depending on how things go, we might have to suspend the insurance on my mother’s car for the winter. Whatever vehicle we get that’s suitable for my husband would not be suitable for her, even if it does have a built in step to get in. However, I would really prefer not to drive that car in the winter at all.

Which brings me to the other reason I stopped at the garage. I’m bringing my mother’s car in next week. I’m getting him to check the air filter and spark plugs. Talking to my brother, neither of us remember those ever being checked, never mind replaced. They might be contributing to the mileage on my mother’s car getting so bad, though. Plus, the check engine light is on again. *sigh*

So we’ll see how that goes. Even if it doesn’t work out with this truck, he at least knows that we are open to something other than a van. Beggars can’t be choosers! At long as it meets our needs for accessibility and load requirements, while remaining in budget, we’ll take it.

That done, I finally made it to the grocery store, picked up a few things along with getting the water refills, then had to fill the tank again before heading home, and into the pouring rain!

While at the gas station, I did pick up a book that I’d been eyeballing. Last month, I got a book on native edible plants. This month, I got the Canadian Outdoor Survival Guide.

It’s aimed at people who go hiking or camping, flying to remote areas, snowmobiling, boating, etc., where you might get lost or have an accident. The info is still useful in general. Things like making a small personal first aid kit, or one for your car, is useful in general. Being Canadian, there’s plenty of focus on winter conditions, as well as regional conditions, which are wildly different in different parts of the country. It’s just a handy thing to add to our library.

Which reminds me of one of the books my friend sent me in a care package not long ago. The one on safe preservation methods. I’m loving it! Even the pressure canning section is pretty much up to date. What I really liked about that section is when it talked about preserving meat. It doesn’t just talk about how to can various proteins, but actually has photos and instructions on how to butcher the animals! Very useful!

We had to leave a lot of books behind when we moved here, because the weight was just too expensive. It feels good to be slowly rebuilding our library again.

The Re-Farmer

I got to pet her!!!

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Nosencrantz has started to regularly show up when I do the morning feeding. We don’t see her in the evenings, though.

This morning, not only did she show up, but when I was putting food in the kibble bowl under the shrine, she started to go for it without waiting for me to leave.

When I reached out, she sniffed my finger – and then allowed me to pet her! Tentatively, at first, but then she actually came closer to enjoy more than my just barely touching her.

She was still nervous, though, and wanted to eat, so I let her be. When I was done my rounds and doing stuff around the house and south yards, she was nowhere to be seen.

At least she’s coming back regularly for food in the mornings.

Now, if only we start seeing Marlee and Butterscotch again!

Not only was I able to pet Nosencrantz today, I was able to catch one of the kittens from the litter of 8 that is still really small. The only reason I was able to catch it was because it was on the cat house roof and three of the bigger cats were milling around, vying for attention, preventing it from running off. It hissed a little when I picked it up, and made a half hearted attempt to bite me when my hand got close to it’s mouth, but then it settled down and stared at my face while I skritched its ears and pet it. This kitten is one of the black ones with a little white patch on its chest, but is really, really fluffy and dense. In fact, its fur feels like it’s all undercoat!

I also saw two of the “new” kittens – the ones that Broccoli brought over not long ago. There’s a black and white one that I saw, then a fluffy white and black one. There’s a tortie that I saw last night, going into the sun room, but I did not see it this morning.

Among the other kittens, some seem to have gone missing. I haven’t seen the one eyed tuxedo kitten in a long time. The other tuxedo that had a messed up eye does seem to be around; we’re only guessing, because one of the tuxedos has an eye that looks… wrong. It doesn’t let us get close enough to get a better look. I haven’t seen the smaller orange and white kitten in a long time, though one of my daughters says she has seen it. The bigger one, with grey mixed in with its orange fur, like Pinky, is not only still around, but I’ve been able to pet it a few times.

Pinky is among the adults we don’t see anymore. Likely moved on to find himself a harem somewhere. Rolando had been back for awhile, but is gone again. It’s really hard to know how many cats we actually have out there. Some mornings, I’ve counted over 30. Today, I counted 26… I think. I’m pretty sure I didn’t double count, but it’s always possible there are kittens hiding under the cat house that I just don’t see to count, too. I make sure to put a bit of kibble at the openings they use, so they can eat without having to be around so many other older, more active, sometimes aggressive, cats. There’s one mama, the white one with black spots, that tends to be aggressive. With the adults, she usually just growls at them, but with the kittens, she will actually attack them! I don’t know what’s going on with her.

Still, we are making progress with the socializing. I wasn’t able to check with the black fluffy one, but so far, all the ones that have accepted attention are… Yup. Male.

It’s awfully hard to keep the population down, when we can’t get near the females to get them spayed! Yeah, we can do the males, but if we don’t do the females, it won’t make much difference.

Meanwhile…

This inside kittens are just loving the new bed! The fact that it’s so tiny seems to be a bonus for them at this stage. We have another larger cat bed that was donated to us, but none of the cats seem to like it. After washing, the stuffing got all lumpy and won’t go back, which is likely the reason. When the adult cats wouldn’t use it, I brought it into my room after washing it, and the kittens don’t use it, either. But, my goodness, do they like this one!

Today is working out to be a blustery day, and we’ve already reached our high of 18C/64F. We are supposed to get heavy rain soon, so that writes off working on the trellis bed or prepping logs, cutting them to side and bringing them over for the second bed. The down side of having only an electric chain saw! Tomorrow is supposed to be a better day, but I’ll be back in the city to do the first Costco shop.

Oh, to have a van again, and not have to make so many trips to the city!

The weekend also looks good, though, so we should be able to break out the extension cords and get cutting again.

Meanwhile, I’ll be making a trip into town soon. We have water jugs to refill, so I’ll take advantage of it to run a few errands at the same time. I’ll even time it so I can get to the post office when it reopens in the afternoon. I’m not expecting any packages but, if there are any, I don’t want to have to make a second trip.

Our province is having an election right now, and the advance polls are open. I should get that done, too! This year, I’m voting for a friend of mine that’s running in a new party. Our province has been lurching between the same two parties all my life, to the point that there’s really no difference between them anymore. Which is scary, considering one of them is trying to out communist the Communist Party (yes, we have an actual Communist Party on our ballots).

Ha! I paused while writing this to look up some stuff. The polling projections don’t even include all the parties running in them, so they’re useless. The CBC (our government owned propaganda media) has a “voting compass” survey that I just did. At the end of it, it actually did match me with the party I plan to vote for, but some of the questions – particularly the demographic questions – were definitely a problem. You could see how the intent was to frame a narrative of how “good guys” would be voting one way and “bad guys” would be voting anything else.

Well, hopefully, there will be a good turn out of legitimate votes – the level of fraud is much lower on the provincial level than at the federal level – and we’ll have a solid rejection of both of the parties that usually win.

We’re supposed to have a federal election coming up, too. I don’t see our Prime Dictator calling it anytime soon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he found a way to prevent it from happening at all, over some new “emergency”. He certainly isn’t going to call it until he’s sure the results are going to be what he bought and paid for, and he’s so hated right now, that might be a while. He tried that in the middle of lockdowns, calling an early election in 2021 to get the majority he was shooting for. So the Libs formed a defacto coalition government with the NDP until 2025. Canada has fixed election dates. Federal elections are supposed to be on the third Monday of October, every 4 years after the previous election. Since T2 called an election in 2021, that makes the deadline for the next federal election 2025, instead of this year.

T2 should have resigned long ago, but the recent honouring of a guy that turned out to be actual Nazi in Parliament while the Ukrainian president was visiting should have been the final straw. Instead, the Speaker of the House was thrown under the bus and resigned, and the Liberals actually tried to have the incident removed from Hansard – the official record of all parliamentary proceedings – to make it like it never happened. The Liberals, who were so quick to call the Trucker Convoy and their supporters Nazis – our PM even calling a Jewish MP whose parents survived the holocaust a Nazi supporter – are now trying to make excuses for their own celebration of a Nazi from a division noted for the atrocities they committed. This was in the region my parents are from, that became part of the USSR after the war and is now part of the Ukraine. My parents saw and survived some of this stuff, so it hit close to home for me. Poland has started extradition proceedings now, too.

But I am getting distracted. Needless to say, though, I’m a lot more motivated to get out an vote. While we still can.

The Re-Farmer

First stock up shop: a triple whammy for $544

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Today was our first trip into the city to stock up for next month. I’ll be doing the Costco trip in a couple of days. This time, I went to three different places.

The first was a Walmart. This is what $249 looks like.

For this stop, I didn’t go to the grocery section at all, but while waiting in line, I saw the display of canned bean cases (9 cans). The price was about what Costco’s price for used to be. $9.97 instead of almost $13. So I grabbed one.

Aside from that one grocery item, I got:

Paper towels: $22.97
Wet cat food (shredded): $28.77
Dry cat food, 7kg size, cheap house brand: $19.97 each. I got 3 for the outside cats, plus one anti-hairball bag for the indoor cats to try.
Puppy pads, 50pk of 30″x30″: $26.97 The kittens are getting better and I’m not changing those as often, but ever now and then, a kitten just decides to pee right next to the litter box. They seem to wait until I’m not in the room to do it!
Men’s t-shirts: one for my husband, one for me, at $8 each
Shampoo and conditioner: $15.47 each Those have sure gone up in price – if I can even find bottles in that size at all!
bright orange acrylic yarn: $5.27 I plan to make baseball cap ear warmers and see if our grocery store/post office will let me sell them there. It took me forever to find yarn in that orange, for the hunters. I also have grey, which I will use together with reflective thread I have.
Dawn Platinum: $2.47 I got a tiny bottle of this to test out in the laundry. I got a couple of new t-shirts for myself not long ago, and both already have stains on them! Unfortunately, I didn’t see the stains until I put the shirts on after washing them. Which is why I ended up buying more t-shirts. From what I’ve been able to find, this stuff will actually get out stains, even after they’ve gone through the dryer. If not… well, I’ve got myself a couple more work shirts. 😕

The total was $223.24, plus $10.66 GST and $14.93 PST, bringing the grand total to $248.83 Plus, I added $100 cash back, which was their maximum.

So that was stop number one.

The next two stops were right next to each other, so it was just one trip. The first was a Dollarama. I was specifically looking for new food dishes for the kittens in my room. We’ve been using old take out containers, which is great for temporary use, or for adult cats, but they’re too big. Since we’re using my room as an isolation ward, it’s time to get proper food bowls. Unfortunately, they tend to be quite expensive, so I tried here. They did have some nice, stainless steel bowls with non-slip rings on their bases that I picked up.

Of course, that’s not all I got. This is what $75 looks like.

Pet food bowls, 8 in total: $2 each
Pet bed (for the kittens): $5
Cat tunnel (for the rest of the cats): $4
Cat toy (for the rest of the cats): $4.75
Cooling rack: $4.75 I’ll be slowly getting more of these. This style, with the squares, will be much better for dehydrating in the oven than the ones I’m using now, which have the wires running in one direction, with only a single support wire down the middle.
Odour remover, 2 of them: $1.50 each
Towel holder: $4 – to replace the wonky one we’re using now, that I made when I was in Junior high, so… about 1980 or so!

I don’t usually get food at the dollar store, but this store has a decent selection, and the prices are a lot better than the grocery stores. Especially the tinned meats. So I got a selection to try out and see if this is something we like enough to be worth stocking in our pantry for the winter, when we are likely to get snowed in for a while.

Chicken flakes, 4 cans: $1.75 each
Light Tuna, 4 cans: $1.00 each
Pink Salmon, 4 cans: $2.25 each
Black olives: $1.75
Artichoke hearts: $2.50
Chestnuts: $1.25 These are cooked chestnuts that I got as a snack for the drive home. 😊
Ice pack: $3.50 We’ve had to throw away some of our smaller gel ice packs, so I got a hard sided type to replace them.

This all came out to $69.25, plus $2.19 in GST and $3.06 in PST for a grand total of $74.50

After that was loaded into the car, it was a walk across the parking lot to my next stop, the international grocery store.

This is a store where we get a few treats or items that we don’t find in any of the other stores we normally go to, plus were we often find new things to try. This is also where I stop for some dim sum for lunch which, together with my drink, cost just over $20.

This is what $206 looks like.

Cleaning vinegar: $5.99 There’s a thing being passed around on social media about how companies have sneakily reduced the acidity of vinegar from 5% to 4%. For people who can, vinegar must be 5% for safety reasons. Well, I’ve looked around, and I’ve yet to see any vinegar at 4% Maybe it’s a US thing. What I did see was 7%. In this store, they have three kinds of white vinegar. Regular vinegar at 5%, canning vinegar at 7% and cleaning vinegar, what I picked up, at 10%. I got their large jug

Bananas: $4.27 for 2 bunches.
Beaver Buzz, 3 Saskatoon berry and 3 Citrus: on sale at 2 for $4.50, or $2.25 each, instead of $2.69 each, plus one cent per can for the enviro fee
Coke Zero: $7.29 plus 12¢ enviro fee
Blade roast: $20.50
Two frying chickens, locally produced and free range: $15.36 (usually, that’s about the price of just one whole chicken)
Smoked applewood bacon (unsliced): $11.24
Smoked bacon (unsliced): $8.17 Both bacons are a locally produced item that we get as a treat.
Raw white prawns, frozen: $9.99, on sale. Regular price, $14.99 These are a treat for the girls.
Truffle olive oil: $15.99 – another treat!
Old Cheddar: $13.99
Mozzarella: $13.99 Normally, we get these cheeses we use mostly for cooking at Costco, but we’re out of cheese, so I got smaller packages for now.
Truffle Gouda cheese: $12.52 This is something we don’t usually see in stock, so I made sure to grab some. Yes, another treat!
Mild goat Gouda: $10.06 Cheese like Gouda are something we get as an “eating cheese” that we enjoy as snacks, rather than in cooking.
Eggs, 1 flat of 30: $9.79
Soy sauce: two at $4.59 each. This is a Philippine brand my husband likes, so I like to stock up on it for the pantry.
fresh green peppercorns: $2.02 We’ve never used these before! We’ll have to look up what to do with them.
Stash Tea, three different flavours: on sale for $3.99 each (regular price, $4.49 each)
Coke Zero: $7.29 plus 12¢ enviro fee
bottled caramel frapp, cold, for the drive home: $3.99 plus 3¢ enviro fee
Jarritos Grapefruit soft drink, cold, for the drive home: $1.99 plus 3¢ enviro fee. At least it was supposed to be for the drive home. I made the mistake of drinking the dairy drink, first. I forgot the caps aren’t a twist off, and I wasn’t going to pull over to the side of the road to dig out a bottle opener! I think I do have one. I’ve returned a multi-tool knife to keep in the car, and I’m pretty sure it has a bottle opener in it.

The total for all this was $202.04, plus $1.65 in GST and $2.29 in PST, for a grand total of $205.98 Plus, I was able to take out another $100 in cash back. We now have enough to get the septic guy in to clean our tank for the winter. He’s really fast about getting to us, so I wanted to make sure I had more than enough cash on hand, before we made the call! Otherwise, I’d have to rush to my mother’s town, where there is a branch of my bank, to take money out before he arrives.

As I was loading up the car, I checked my phone and found my daughter had transferred funds over. I messaged her, asking if there was anything in particular it was for, but it was mostly to just help with the groceries – but it did remind me of a couple of things I meant to pick up for them that I forgot! So, once everything was loaded (with most of the frozen ice packs I brought from home), I went back in and got:

Coffee creamer, largest size bottle: $7.99
soya drink, 1 gallon size: $6.39 This is one of those specific items we don’t find anywhere else. I do wish the girls weren’t drinking soy, though. That stuff’s pretty nasty. Especially since they both have PCOS.

Anyhow. That totalled another $14.38

So that was the damage for today, plus gas, which was just over $20 to fill the tank. Prices have dropped to 163.9¢/L recently, though in the city, I saw places at 162.9 and 161.9 With an energy drink and a snack for breakfast, plus some lotto tickets, the gas station purchases totalled a little over $40.

Not counting my lunch and gas station purchases, the total for today was $543.69 in total.

The international grocery store printed out entry forms with every receipt for a contest to win free groceries for a year. Since I came back for stuff I’d forgotten, I ended up with two entries. Today is the last day for the contest, so I’m glad I made it today. Plus, the receipts for the grocery store, and the Walmart, both have entries to win $1000 gift cards after filling out a “how did we do” survey. Normally, I don’t bother with those, but with the prices of groceries these days, I think I’ll be entering those!

After this will be the Costco and Canadian Tire shop. Canadian Tire is for the litter pellets and another few fire bricks for our outdoor kitchen, if they have them in stock. Since we don’t have a replacement van yet, we will likely have to make a second trip to Costco, just for more bags of dry cat food, now that I know that twelve 9kg bags will not last us a month. In that size, we would need 16 bags for 1 month! If we don’t get anything else that’s large or heavy (like the litter pellets), I can fit eight 9kg bags in my mother’s car, though it really doesn’t like it.

That reminds me. I should book it to get checked. I mentioned how the mileage seems to be getting worse, and he has some suggestions for me to get looked at.

That would be a good time to talk to our mechanic about how things are looking for finding us a vehicle within the financing budget.

I keep saying to myself, as long as we have it before winter, I’m good. In truth, I feel dread, every time I drive my mother’s car. It has had so many problems since my mother bought it, and since we took over keeping it registered so we have a vehicle she can get in and out of, it has had more problems then our van did! The faster we can get a replacement vehicle, the better.

The Re-Farmer

A wasted day

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Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to curl up and sleep like kittens do?

I had another sleepless night last night. 😢 I don’t know why, but every time I lay down, I started to feel wicked heartburn. At least I think that’s what it was. I could even feel it moving up my esophagus, the longer I was prone. I finished off the last of our Pepto, but I’m not sure that it helped. If it did, it took a long time. I ended up having to set things up so I could be upright, but couldn’t sleep like that.

Of course, with me being upright, the kittens thought it was play time. They actually were an appreciated distraction, for the most part.

I feel better now, but totally wasted. Of course, the usual things still needed to get done, but I skipped my morning rounds and switching out the memory cards on the trail cams and went back to bed. It wasn’t until about 1 or 1:30 that I finally had breakfast. I did get some stuff done, but it mostly made me feel more frustrated about how much wasn’t being done. It’s not like the world will end if these jobs get delayed a bit, but I have that constant feeling of time running out, this time of year.

Well, I’d better be feeling better by tomorrow, because I’m heading into the city to do our first shop for October, whether I like it or not. I’ve decided to do the smaller shopping, rather than the bulk Costco shopping, hitting places like the international grocery store we never made it to last month, etc.

It would have been nice if we could be doing this shop in a new-to-us van, but we’ve had no word on anything there, which means our mechanic hasn’t found something that meets our needs and the financing limitations yet. I’ll be happy just to have it before winter. I really don’t to have to be driving my mother’s car in the winter!

Ah, well. It is what it is.

The Re-Farmer