The first was the ear mite medication I bought. When I finally opened the bag to get it out, I realized that there was a sealed box inside.
I bought one dose.
A box has 6 doses!
After going over the receipt and making sure I was seeing what I wasn’t supposed to be seeing, I called up the vet clinic and told them what I found, and that I’d like to return the extras. The receptionist went to talk to a tech and confirmed that, as long as the individual dose packages were still sealed, they could take them back.
I plan to go to the city for our second stock up trip, so I’ll make sure to go to town first and drop the extras off and go to the city by a different route. Somebody made what could have been an expensive mistake!
I also found a surprise in the sun room.
Usually, when doing the evening feeding, I go through the old kitchen, where the kibble is stored. This time, I happened to go out the main entry to take something to the compost bin, then went back in through the sun room to put away the rinsed out bin I’d used. We have had rain on and off all day today, and there were a number of startled cats sheltering in the sun room when I came in. As I saw them dashing around, I noticed a tiny tail disappearing between two bins.
A grey tail.
I was actually able to reach in and give it head scritches, though it did not like that. When I got the kibble ready, I left a handful in front of where it was hiding – it could only back up so far. We still coat the kibble with lysine and, from the looks of it, this kitten could use some!
I thought, at first, that this was the tuxedo’s sibling, but now that I look at the pictures, I can see its eyes are still blue, so it is younger. For now, we are leaving it in the sun room, though I did set out a container of water for it to find, too. I have no clue which cat this one belongs to.
In between the rain, I checked out a few things. The last of the Jiffy pellets that have seeds that didn’t germinate are still on the picnic table under the old market tent. The picnic table is not completely under the tent, so some of the trays are being rained on. I checked them and drained the excess water, and found a single lemon cucumber has germinated! Which makes me wonder how many other things will decide to germinate, too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to transplant anything that does. If we get both types of cucumbers, there’s enough time to have harvests before fall, at least.
I grabbed some broken plant pots we’d been hanging on to and set a bunch of them up in the squash patch, buried in the mulch, for the frogs to hide in. Yesterday evening, I used grass clippings to mulch the spaces between squash mounds in rows; the paths in between will be mulched with wood chips. I am still finding some slugs, so I think I will shake out more corn meal, after I get back from the city tomorrow. We’re still expecting rain off and on all night.
When there were just the too-small pieces left, I went to put them in the old garden shed. When I opened the door, I startled Caramel. There’s a rotted out hole in the back of the shed that cats can get in and out of. She seemed strangely hesitant about running away from me, so I took a closer look at where she had been. Sure enough, there was a wriggly little worm! Looks like she’s moving her kittens again! I quickly put the broken pieces of pots away near the door and closed the shed up again, so she could tend to her baby.
As for the one in the sun room, I suspect this baby is not quite weaned yet, so we will have to leave it alone for now. I’ll still make sure to check on it and, if it hasn’t been moved, leave food for it and perhaps its mother.
Oh! Good grief.
One of the things I picked up in town today was a couple of cat collars with bells. Leyendecker and Finnegan (one of our original tuxedos that moved out with us) have been spraying, so we’re hoping the bells will alert us to them being where they shouldn’t be.
I just heard a bell tinkling behind me, so I looked over to see Leyendecker walk over, then jump onto my bed.
For all that I see him every day, it blows me away, just how BIG he is! I don’t mean how chonky he is, either. He is just a massive cat. He’s taller and longer than just about every other cat, and very, very burly. Hard to believe he was the smallest kitten of the litter!
Happily, I was able to arrange to get ear mite medication for Not-Junkpile! One tube of the kind to spread onto the skin between the shoulder blades. Now, we just have to get ahold of her in a calm way to apply it.
On the way home, I stopped at the post office. Happily, the last of the tomato transplants that had been left outside as give-aways were gone! I hope the people that took the transplants get to enjoy them all.
It was what we got in the mail, however, that leaves us in a bit of a conundrum, and I am more than open to people’s thoughts on this.
Not long after we moved here, my husband got an offer from his insurance company, to buy out his disability. The letter stated that this would be a one time offer. It was about $250,000. We decided against it, and figured that was that.
Well, he got another offer. It’s been a few years, so of course the offer is less – about $220,000.
The pros and cons haven’t really changed over the years.
For the pros, it means being able to put the majority of the buyout into a TFSA, where it can earn compound interest. We could give ourselves the same monthly “income” out of that, and be okay. He would also still be getting his CPP Disability.
Not being on disability payments means that I would no longer be penalized for earning an income. With the current set up, we are allowed to have a maximum amount of outside income, and the rest gets deducted from his private insurance payments. When he started to get CPP Disability, it meant getting an extra $400 a month at the time, which was about a third of what his CPP Disability payments were at the time. In other words, his private insurance was reduced by about $800. Since the amount we are “allowed” to earn – and any income I make would be counted as household income – is maxed out, anything I earned would be deducted from his private insurance payments. We’d have to report my income, otherwise we’d risk losing it all.
This would no longer be an issue, so if I wanted to get a job, or start a home based business, etc., I would be free to do that.
Basically, we would have a lot more flexibility if we took the buyout package.
One thing that is both a pro and a con is that we would lose his medical insurance, too. Blue Cross pays 90% of most of his medications. Without insurance, we’d be paying about $2000 a month on his medications. Then there are the occasional costs, like CPAP supplies and, once every 5 years, a new CPAP. The province we live in has Pharmacare, and once the equivalent of the deductible is paid off by the 10% we pay ourselves, some of his meds switch to being covered completely by Pharmacare. He has one medication that his insurance has limited coverage for, so the doctor filed for a special exemption, and it is now covered 100% by Pharmacare. So while my husband would still get prescription coverage, but he might have several of his medications completely switched out to versions that the Pharmacare system covers. His CPAP, however, is not covered by Pharmacare, though I believe they will cover the costs of a BiPAP.
As for the cons…
Right now, we have a regular income that is unaffected by external factors. Something we really appreciated when the world went crazy. Had my husband still been able to work, he would have lost his job 3 years ago. We’d go from a regular income to living off a lump sum.
Now, arranging it so that we have a monthly income equivalent to what we’re getting now, plus adjustments to compensate for changes in prescription coverage, is great in theory. The problem is, we both know just how easy it would be to dip into the funds for things we need. For example, we need to replace the van. We’d be able to buy used one outright and not have car payments, but that would remove a large chunk out of the buyout. There are a lot of things we need that we do without, because the funds just aren’t there. It would be just too easy to use the buyout funds. Then, of course, if we end up with emergency vet bills, emergency vehicle expense, etc. … well, the money would be there.
But not for long.
Yes, I could go and get a job, but I’m turning 55 this month, and there is no job out there that I could get that would replace the lost income. I’d only be going for part time work, anyhow, because my “job” right now it taking care of the farm. Even if the girls both got jobs outside the home, the three of us together wouldn’t be able to replace the income. There are exceedingly few higher income jobs out here and, with the cost of gas, commuting to the city just isn’t feasible, even if we did replace the van with a newer vehicle that gets better mileage. If we did have to commute, we’d have to replace my mother’s car, too.
Of course, working outside the home isn’t ideal, anyhow. Especially in winter, where even if the plows manage to clear the roads quickly, we might not be able to get out of our driveway until a kind neighbour comes by – which means we’d have to go into the buyout to buy a new snow blower or some other snow clearing equipment. There are small utility tractors that come with all sorts of attachments, like plows, mowers, soil augers, front end loaders and back hoes. One of those would save us all kinds of effort here on the farm, but the cost would take a huge chunk out of the buyout package.
I admit, the thing I’m chaffing over is not being able to bring in my own income, but that would come at the cost of giving up a fixed, but liveable, reliable income.
On top of that, he’s only got 10 years left, anyhow. At age 65, his insurance plan ends. Even his CPP Disability would be converted to just CPP. In theory, in 10 years, I could also start getting a pittance for CPP (the consequence of being a stay at home mom and homeschooling the girls) and Old Age Security, which is also a pittance. Assuming both even exist 10 years from now. Both together would not make up the loss of his private insurance.
So do we accept the buyout and live off of it while working to build up incomes?
Or do we keep a fix income that pays the bills, but has very little wiggle room, and I would actually be penalized for earning extra money to make up for it?
I’ve been watching the self seeded poppies in the old kitchen garden, where one plant in particular has been growing faster than the others, with flower buds looking ready to open.
Today, it bloomed.
I did not plant this poppy.
I had figured the poppies that were showing up were from the Giant Rattle bread seed poppy we planted in the area previously. Which are supposed to look a lot like these Hungarian Blue poppies…
The tiny raised bed we have shallots in do have poppies coming up in it, too, and those are likely the Giant Rattle poppies we planted there 2 years ago, then again using our own seed last year. This is what they looked like.
Looking back at my photos, I found we did get one of these red poppies last year.
This, however, showed up after we cleared away some of the undergrowth along the spruce grove, on the other side of the house.
From what I can find, these are Double Scarlet Papasver somniferum – an opium poppy! These predate us living here, but they are not the poppies I remember my mother growing here, when I was a child.
Meanwhile, the bed where we did deliberately plant bread seed poppies that seemed to be overtaken by weeds, does have poppies growing in it. The flower pods that are starting to develop on some are more elongated than I’ve seen before. These are the Hungarian Blue that we are trying this year. At least I hope that’s what they are! The Baker Creek website has photos of the pods and flowers, but not the plants or flower buds.
Now I’m very curious about what the poppies in the shallot bed will be!
In other things, I saw Non-Junkpile today, and she has a new injury, on the other side of her head!
It’s very much like the first one, that is healed.
We are now thinking this is a self injury. She probably has a very bad infestation of ear mites, and is injuring herself by scratching.
The problem is, this is not one of the friendlies. I’ve been able to get fairly close, while there is food, but even as I tried to get a picture of the injury, she kept moving away. There is no chance of getting her to a vet. Especially since she has a litter of kittens somewhere.
There is the type of ear mite medication that can be applied to the skin between the shoulders. If we could get some of that, there is a better possibility that we could snag her long enough to apply it, than to get drops into her ears. But the clinic can’t usually give out prescriptions for cats they’ve never seen. I’ll have to see what we can figure out about that
Oh! Well, would you look at that. I’m getting messages from the Cat Lady. Maybe she has some suggestions!
It’s like they all exploded into existence, overnight. I’ve read that peas don’t like to be over watered, but they sure seemed to like the downpour we had!
The remaining three strawberry plants in the asparagus bed were eaten. One not as bad as the others, but a lot of leaf loss, for sure. I have to find some way to protect this bed, so the plants can recover.
What I really wanted to check – with some dread, I admit! – was the squash patch. Did the cornmeal work, or did my squash plants get decimated by the hundreds of slugs I saw last night?
Well… the good news is, there was no new damage to any of the plants, though a couple of seedlings will certainly not recover from the state I found them in last night.
There wasn’t a single slug, in any of the traps.
I could still see corn meal dusted on the mulch around each mound.
I didn’t see a single slug, live or dead.
Now, a live slug, I would not have expected to see. Not in the sun and heat we already had by then. But I did think I might see less cornmeal around the plants, and dead slugs.
It could be, they ate their fill, then crawled away before they died, but if that were so, I would not have expected to see so much cornmeal still visible.
So I’m not sure what to make of this. I mean, I’m glad there is no new damage to the plants, but for all I know, they’ll be back tonight.
Which means, when I head out to do my evening rounds, I’ll be looking closely at the squash patch!
Well, it looks like I got home just in time! Things were clear and sunny while I was in the city, but I drove home to a dark cloud. As we unloaded, there was thunder all around us, and just touches of rain. From the radar, it looks like a series of small, severe storms are being blown in from the West, all across the Prairies.
Meanwhile, our weather apps are pinging with tornado warnings.
No, not for us. For the south end of our province, near the US border. We’re getting the warnings because the whole province is included in the warnings. Which is a bit like if you lived in Spokane, Washington, but were getting weather warnings intended for Boise, Idaho.
What’s hilarious is looking at a closer view of the weather radar, and it shows a storm system is expected to split in two, with one part passing to the north of us, and the other to the south of us. We might not even get rain.
No matter. We are now pretty stocked up and won’t need to go out again to do the rest of the stocking up for a few days.
Today was just a Costco shop, and this is what $736.36 looks like.
There were a few unplanned purchases this time. One was a linen summer dress for my younger daughter, who really, really loves linen fabric, for $23.99 I’m happy to say, it did fit her. The problem with sizing is, they aren’t standardized, so you never really know if a size on the label of one brand will be the same at the same label size on another. Plus, there’s no stretch to linen, so if the arm holes are cut differently, for example, even if it’s the right size, you might not be able to even put it on.
Another unexpected purchase was a 2 pack of down spout extensions, for $18.99. As soon as everything was unloaded, I got those on right away! There is a downspout near the main entry, facing the kibble house, that drains way too close to the house. I’ve never added to it, because it’s also a fairly high traffic area. These flexible extensions will solve that problem. The other downspout was off the corner of the old kitchen, near the septic tank. The end had a short length of downspout on it that was starting to split, and that was extended by another length of PVC pipe. Those have both been replaced by a single extender, and I am quite happy with the change!
One more unexpected purchase was a package of work gloves, at $14.99. Our garden gloves are getting worn out and falling apart, so we really needed new ones. A package of garden gloves, however cost more than $20, and the quality is not as good.
Of course, the bulk of the purchase was cat food. I got a case of wet cat food at $38.99. With the dry cat food, I got four Kirkland brand, 9kg bags at $26.99 each. I also got a couple of 11.6kg Whiskas brand. Regular price, $37.99, but they were $8 off, so that was a good deal.
For the rest:
Regular mayo, two jars: 10.99 each, minus $2.50 each at the till Pork rinds: 10.99 (I plan to use them as a bread crumb substitute) Two rotisserie chickens: 7.99 each Ground pork chub: 19.99 Ground beef chub: 45.76, minus $5 at the till Pork loin: 28.28 Two backs strawberries: 5.99 each Family size sushi pack: 21.99 (for supper at home) Shepherd Pie: 21.91 (for my husband who doesn’t eat sushi) Triple berry jam: 7.99 5 pounds of butter: 5.49 each 4 packages of tortilla wraps: 9.99 each Four 2pks of rye bread: 5.99 each, minus $2 each at the till Two 1L cartons of whipping cream: 4.79 each Double cream brie: 10.99 4pk cream cheese: 9,49 Sour cream: 5.49 Old Cheddar cheese: 14.99 Mozzarella cheese: 14.99 Iced tea mix: 9.99 Peanut butter: 10.49 10kg bag of sugar: 13.69 2pk fabric softener: 16.49 (I’ve been looking for these for months! This will last us for a couple of years.) Dish detergent: 8.59 Toilet paper: 22.99
That made for a grand total of $692.92, plus $43.44 in taxes, for 49 items.
*sigh*
We didn’t get a lot of meat this time, as we will be ordering a couple of BBQ freezer packs from our beef supplier. Which I need to do after I finish this, or I’ll forget again.
By this point in the shopping, I didn’t even finish going through the store, as I was really pushing the limit on how much my mother’s car can handle. Another thing I need to remember: get the van to the garage! At least this month, we don’t have extra bills, or things like needing to empty the septic tank.
I got gas at Costco at 145.9 cents per liter. Everywhere else in the city is 157.9 With the new carbon tax kicking in on July 1, gas prices are going to go up, so a lot of people were filling jerry cans. Which reminds me: I need to refill our 20L can for Premium gas that we keep for the lawnmowers and wood chipper. To make it easier to fill the tanks, we transfer fuel from the 20L can to a pair of 5L cans. Right now, I’m down to maybe half of one of those 5L cans. We will probably do another city trip on Friday, so that would be a good time to swing by Costco again, just for gas, to fill the 20L container. That should last us for the rest of the summer, and possibly into next year.
Now it’s time to go over the list to see what got missed this trip, and make sure we get them on our next city trip, when the rest of my husband’s disability pay comes in.
After I place an order for that beef! I’m already forgetting!
As I expected, the predicted thunderstorms went right past us BUT, we did get a wonderful downpour!
While it was raining, my daughter came to ask me to go outside with her; she was hearing bad sounding cat noises and, fearing a cat might be trapped somewhere, she wanted to have an extra pair of hands with her.
Well, it wasn’t a trapped cat. It was Shop Towel beating up The Distinguished Guest. I had to literally kick them apart, he had such a death grip on TDG.
In the process, I got completely soaked. When I got back inside, I decided to change straight into my pajamas. I considered skipping my evening rounds, but when the rain stopped and it was clear it was done for the day, I headed out in my pajamas.
I am so glad I did.
I discovered, we have a war going on in the squash patch!
I’ve been seeing some slug damage already, but the rain must have brought them out. The first couple of hills with summer squash seedlings, I found some munching away and started picking them off.
Then I saw what was in the mulch around it.
The little red dots that you see mark the slugs in just one small area – and it isn’t even one of the worst hills! Every single hill had them; even the ones that were resown and hadn’t germinated yet. I checked every plant, making sure to look under each leaf, and some of them were covered with slugs on the underside! While I took slugs off the plants themselves, there was just too many of them. Most of them were incredibly tiny, as if they’d hatched very recently, but there were plenty of big ones, too.
I went in to do some research on how to get rid of them. There is the well known beer trap, which does work. However, my daughters are the beer drinkers, and they don’t drink the cheap stuff. I’d have to buy beer, and the beer traps would need to be refilled every day. It could be done, but not the best option, and not something we could do right away.
Slugs apparently hate coffee grounds, so sprinkling coffee grounds around the plants to protect them would work. Especially if ground eggshells were also included. The girls have been drinking cold brewed coffee in this heat, but the grounds go straight into the compost bucket. So they will start keeping the grounds for me, spreading them on a tray to dry in the oven. It would take quite a lot of grounds for the size of our squash patch, so it would take quite a while to have enough to sprinkle around every plant. With so many slugs, they’d probably eat all our squash plants well before then.
Then I found out that slugs love cornmeal, but it kills them. It was recommended to make slug traps by putting a couple tablespoons of cornmeal into jars, then putting the jars out, laying on their sides, in the evening. By morning, they should be filled with dead slugs.
We buy cornmeal in large bags, but haven’t been baking cornbread lately, because of the heat, so we have quite a lot of it handy.
My younger daughter and I gathered up small jars that we’ve been hanging onto, put cornmeal in them, then took them out to the garden. I wasn’t going to use any of our good canning jars, so we only had eight jars.
We have 30 mounds in the squash patch.
I scattered the jars around, putting some on the mounds with more visible slugs. You can just see part of one of them in the above picture. Still, it just didn’t seem like it would be enough.
So I took an empty sour cream container – the 500ml size – and used an awl to punch largish holes in the lid, then filled the container with cornmeal.
In this picture, you can see that one of the seedlings is mostly eaten. There had been no damage on that seedling, this morning.
You can also see cornmeal sprinkled all around on the mulch. I used the sour cream container as a shaker and spread cornmeal liberally around every single hill. I really don’t care if the slugs get trapped in the jars or not. I just want them dead.
I really hope this works. With how many slugs I saw – and knowing many more would be hidden in the mulch or the grass – it’s entirely possible most of the squash plants would be eaten by morning.
I have never seen so many slugs in my life. Not even when living in Victoria, BC, where the banana slugs would be out like crazy after a rainfall. It is absolutely insane!
While doing this, I saw only one frog in the squash patch. We see more of them among the other beds, but the squash patch is too exposed for their comfort. The next step in the battle is to set up frog houses all around the squash patch. The challenge will be the heat, as there won’t be a lot of shade in the squash patch until the plants get bigger – and for them to do that, they need to survive the slugs! I could simply lay out some boards in places. I’ve got a stack of them that were used to protect the tomatoes from wind, when they were first transplanted. We’ve got broken ceramic pots that would work, if we also cover them with mulch to keep them shaded from the sun.
We’ve got a lot of frogs this year. I will happily enlist them to gobble up as many slugs as their round little bellies can handle!
This is war, and I’m willing to break out the big guns, if I have to!
Okay, the running around I did with my mother yesterday drained me a lot more than I thought it did. I feel totally wasted today. And she wasn’t even having one of her bad days, either.
I’m also not quite sure what is worth getting started on outside right now. We’re under thunderstorm warnings. The south end of the province is supposed to get the brunt of the storms, but looking at the weather radar, is does look like the system will go right over us, too, for a change. However, with the weird climate bubble we have over us, due to our location between lakes both small and huge, there have been times when the radar shows a system right on top of us, but when I look out the window, there’s nothing. So do I go out and start a job that would normally take a lot of time, or requires electricity, and risk a storm blowing over? Or just putter around with small jobs and leave myself feeling like the entire day is waste?
At least I got this cheerful sight, first thing.
Best of all, I GOT TO TOUCH THE BABY!!!! While he was eating under there, I was able to come close, reach under and start petting his back. He sort of looked around at me, then kept eating. If another cat hadn’t made some sudden crashing noises, he would have stayed longer, too.
I was able to see that the big wood tick visible in his fur previously is now gone, and I could feel no other lumps and bumps as I pet him. I think it was in a location fairly easy to get groomed out. Unlike when I found that cluster of wood ticks by Pinky’s ear a few days ago.
While doing my rounds, I checked out all the garden beds and did some weeding, but I’m hoping we’ll at least get some rain, so I didn’t hook up the sprinkler and soaker hoses, or do any other watering. The girls hadn’t had a chance to move the branch pile I’d made yesterday, so I dragged that off. I was rather pleased to find the branches were stacked in such a way that I could just grab the bottom branches and pull it across the lawn, all at once!
I haven’t completely put away the seedling trays with the Jiffy pellets that didn’t germinate. It looks like two little Birds Egg gourds have shown up! While weeding in the old kitchen garden, near my daughter’s daffodils, I found cleared a space that could actually have something planted in it. I’m considering sticking the new seedlings in there. If they survive, they would get big enough to shade out a lot of the weeds, but might also get big enough to shade out the flowers my daughter planted in there. Another option is the space we had ground cherries in last year. This was partly an experiment to see if they would seed themselves, and it looks like they did not. Which means there’s a spot with really good soil potentially available. If I pull more dandelion roots out of there, I think it would be worth trying.
I’m still disappointed over how many things had zero germination rates. Some winter squash, and both types of cucumbers, in particular that I was looking forward to.
Now… it is worthwhile for me to get the extension cords out and use the weed trimmer, so I can access those trees my brother cut down for me? According to the weather app, it should stop raining within half an hour. In fact, on the animated radar, I can watch the rain system moving right over us.
It’s not raining right now. There isn’t even any wind.
*sigh*
Well, we’ll see what I manage to get done, so the day isn’t entirely wasted.
I managed to get a few things done before I had to head out to my mother’s. This is what I was greeted with, when I started getting the kibble for the outside cats.
This kitten has moved right into the shelter area! He runs away from me, but waits until I’m fairly close before he does. For example, I was able to walk past him while he was on this rail, and all he did was tuck himself further under the rose bush.
After feeding the cats and doing my morning rounds, I got out the extended pole pruner and cut away some of the problem branches from Chinese elms near the chain link fence. We’ve been pruning them back pretty much every year since we’ve moved here, but the branches grow back very quickly. Pruning one tree now allows for more light to reach where the peas are planted, but the branch that’s casting the most shade is too high for the pruner, even at maximum height. I dragged off the one branch I did get down, to add it to the pile by the fire pit. I really should have broken it down to smaller pieces, first! Elm is a very heavy wood, and once it was on the ground, I realized the branch was quite a bit bigger than I thought.
I also worked on the elm near the vehicle gate into the inner yard, next to the asparagus patch. This is another tree we’ve cut back before, but when the septic truck came out, it was hitting branches again! I got a couple of the problem branches down but started running out of time, so I just broke them down quickly with the mini-chainsaw pruner and piled them for the girls to haul away later. Some of the branches that need to be taken down will probably have to wait until fall, as they would end up falling right on the asparagus and strawberries. If I wait until they are mulched for the winter, they will protected enough.
Then it was time to change and head out to get some gas, then pick up my mother. We then drove to the next major town, about half way to the city from her place, for her eye appointment. I wanted to get her there early, since she was a first time patient. I explained to her that they would need her health care card and do the “paperwork” to get her into their system, and that they would need to take her glasses to measure her current prescription and do some pre-tests. When we got there, though, she actually seemed surprised when they actually did all the things I explained to her. It was as if she didn’t believe me or something! The timing worked out just right, though; all the pre-stuff was done just before her appointment time, and the eye doctor called her in, right on schedule!
There were a few tests she did with my mother that she didn’t do with me when I had my appointment, like checking my mother’s peripheral vision. My mother will have a fairly minor change in her prescription. She mentioned having headaches, mostly when reading, so we hope the change will make those go away. If the headaches turn out to be caused by something else, she’ll at least be seeing better!
Then the doctor went over the photos taken of the inside of my mother’s eyes. She is showing early signs of macular degeneration, but it is still dry, so there is no treatment for it. She was given a booklet about a specific multivitamin that can help slow down further degradation, that also has a grid eye test on the back page. The doctor got her to use it as instructed, looking at a center dot with one eye covered, and what to look for. It turns out that, with one of her eyes, the grid lines look wavy. For now, the thing to watch out for is if it starts to get worse and, if it does, to get back to her right away.
The one odd thing was when she asked if we had any other questions, and my mother started asking about why an eye might turn all red. The doctor said there could be many reasons and, as my mother continued, I realized she was talking about what that happened to her, four or five years ago. After having a sneezing or coughing fit (I can’t remember which, right now), she popped a blood vessel in her eye. I drove her to the hospital in this town every day for a week, so she could get a blood thinning injection, to help it heal faster. And it did.
Turns out, she either doesn’t remember why it happened, or doesn’t believe that her sneezing/coughing fit actually caused it, anymore. It looks like she’s rewriting her memory about it, too. When I realized what she was talking about and mentioned driving her to the hospital for the injection daily like that, she gave me this death glare for saying something. *sigh*
But, the appointment went well, and she got her prescription. She had brought up with me earlier about the possibility of going to Walmart to get her glasses, because one of the people in her building suggested it. I told her that she could probably get cheaper glasses there, but recommended getting them here, because she’d get better care. After her appointment, when she was told she could look at frames to get her new glasses if she wanted, she started hemming and hawing. I again recommended doing it right away here, if only to get it over and done with, and she sort of agrees. But first, I took her to the counter to pay for the appointment. That confused her and, for some reason, she thought they wanted her health care card again. She had the money for the payment already set aside in an envelope in her purse. She was told she could pay for it together with her new glasses, but that confused her even more, so I told them to just process the payment for the appointment on its own.
With her knees being an issue, my mother wasn’t up to wandering around to look at frames, so one of the staff asked her some questions, then went looking for frames that were sort of like what my mother already had. She ended up bringing two metal and two plastic frames. One of the metal frames were a bright red that matched the shirt my mother happened to be wearing, but my mother would not consider such a bright colour! What was funny about that is that the frames she did choose were a plastic pair with blues, browns and greys, and very trendy! 😄 They look good on her, though, and she liked them, so that’s all that mattered – though I know my mother well enough that she chose them more because she was overwhelmed by having to choose at all.
Then they started asking her about what coatings she wanted, and that was almost more than she could handle. She basically told the woman that was helping her at this point to just give her good glasses, and that she would trust her! 😄 They checked her current glasses and basically matched what she already had.
As we were talking, my mother kept asking questions about the chain and how long they were here, etc. They didn’t quite understand what she meant at first, and told her about other franchise locations, but she was really trying to ask if they’d been located anywhere else. She was still convinced that there was only one eye clinic in this town. They told her there was another one, and where it was located, so she figures that’s what she was remembering. I don’t know when she was last taken to this town to get her eyes tested, but considering she says she was taken to it by her niece, it had to have been well over 10 years ago!
I’m amused that it took them telling her there was another eye clinic for her to finally believe it. We even drove past it later one.
The main thing is, her glasses are ordered. They’ll call me when they are in, and I’ll bring my mother in to pick them up.
That done, even though she was clearly tired, my mother wasn’t ready to go home. So we ended up going to a chicken place for a late lunch/early supper. This is a place she normally goes to in this town, but I don’t know that she’ll be willing to go back again, even though the food was excellent, and so was the service. There seems to have been a change in ownership since we were last there, the the people running it are *gasp* not white. We heard another customer talking to the guy that seated us (well; my mother ignored him and walked right to the table she wanted, so… tried to seat us) and he said he was from Pakistan, so when the waitress came by towards the end of the meal, my started asking her where she was from and how long she’s been in Canada…
She was born here. Second generation Canadian, it turned out.
Thankfully, my mother behaved, and didn’t make any rude comments.
Oh, that reminds me. During conversation, she brought up not going back to the Chinese restaurant that’s right next to her building. Why? Because she’s been seeing so many strange cats lately. *sigh* I think one of the people in her building told her this, but when I asked, my mother said there was something in the news about a Chinese restaurant in the city, where they were caught serving cat meat. The problem is, she could have seen something about this years ago, and who knows in what context it was in. Now, very suddenly, she has decided that because she once saw a strange cat in the field outside her window, it means the Chinese restaurant next to her place is using cat meat…
*sigh*
Anyhow…
When it came time to take care of the bill, I made sure to pay it, because my mother doesn’t believe in tips. Before we left, though, she took the receipt from me. When I got her home and she looked at it, she was really shocked by the amount. I told her that included the tip, and she was all “why did you give a tip? She just did her job. She should be happy to have a job…” The usual.
I told her, I tipped her because she gave us really good service. I know the tipping expectation has gotten pretty extreme these days, but some people will always get tips from me. Wait staff is one of them (especially if my mother’s behaviour has been particularly bad!). Our septic guy is another. 😄
By the time I got my mother home and was getting ready to head home myself, I realized I’d been out for 6 hours already. Almost 5 1/2 of those were with my mother. No wonder I was feeling so tired!
One the way home, though, I swung by the post office. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I did want to see if the tomatoes and peppers were gone. The peppers were all gone, as well all the Black Beauty tomatoes, but there were still a few Spoon and Romas left. I hope someone will take them, but if they’re still there the next time I check, I’ll take them back and try to find someplace to plant them!
Once at home, I went straight back out again to do my evening routine with, today, included giving the Korean Pine in the outer yard a deep watering.
I was watched the entire time by cows. 🐮🐮🐮🐮
I thought I had been hearing them for the past couple of days! I love it when the renter’s cows are here!
I was planning to go to bed early tonight, and get and early start working outside, but it’s already 9pm as I finish writing this, and I still need to update my siblings about how things went with my mother!
Then, it’s bed time. Hopefully, I’ll actually fall asleep instead of suddenly becoming wide awake once my head hits the pillow! 😄😄😄
I hooked up the hose end for the garden tap to the new connector, and it screwed on without any problems at all! The last few times I tried to connect it directly to the tap, the threads just would not line up, no matter what.
Which means I was able to check out where the leak is.
When I first turned on the water, I could hear it gurgling away, then start sputtering, until I could see water starting to gush out of the ground.
After a while, the pressure just kept increasing, and I had quite the fountain spraying high into the air!
I tried turning on the garden tap and did get some some water flowing. Brown, at first, which is no surprise. After a while, though, so much water was spraying from the hole, barely a dribble was making it up to the tap anymore.
When I grabbed a stake to mark the spot, I at first hit what I thought was a root going over the hose.
I was wrong.
It was the hose (looks like a pipe, actually), itself. I pushed the dirt around a bit and exposed more of it.
I honestly expected this to be buried a lot deeper. I was expecting to have to dig a trench to get it out, and was hoping it wouldn’t be too deep. It looks like it’s barely under the soil surface at all!
Which might explain those holes. They are a series of open lines in a row, not a crack. It makes me wonder if someone went over it with some sort of equipment that somehow punctured it.
When we do get around to pulling this up, I hope to be able to bury the replacement at least a little bit deeper! We’ll see how many roots we have to work around, when we do it.
I thought this whole thing was basically a buried garden hose, like the visble section by the house that gets screwed onto the tap, but the part uncovered looks like PVC pipe.
The Re-Farmer 