Well, I made it into town today to do a small grocery shopping trip.
I forgot about daylight savings. Most of our clocks automatically shift, but not the truck. I got there, thinking they were already open for a while, but I was 15 minutes early.
The truck now has the correct time! 😄
I was not the only one waiting.
As for the truck, it did run fine in general, though I was still feeling some shuddering that I couldn’t attribute to the wind. On the way home, I was headlong into the wind and actually had a hard time getting up to speed! I think it’ll run smoother after the oil change, though. Once I get the all clear from our mechanic, I’ll do the Costco stock up trip in the city.
For now, I did what is a more typical local shop. Getting a few things we needed, plus taking advantage of sales.
This is what $183.20 looks like.
I did end up getting a fair bit more than planned, but still… that’s not a lot for almost $200!
This is what I got.
I got a 4 pack of Monsters, mostly for my daughters. I did get one more from one of the store fridges for the drive home. We’ll pick up a case at Costco (which I get reimbursed for by my daughter). I also picked up some Coke Zero and Fresca. Those are for all 4 of us. I can’t stand Fresca, and my daughters don’t like Coke Zero. My husband likes both.
The Mafalda Corta is a pasta. I was actually looking for broad egg noodles, but the only ones I found were skinny ones from a specialty brand and cost over $13 for a bag! Nope. I got the pasta that was on sale. I want to make haluski, so I’ll try it with the Mafalda Corta pasta, instead. The radiatori pasta is something fun I like to get when it’s on sale.
The rice crackers were for my husband. I also got four packages of pudding mix because they were on an excellent sale.
I got two 18s of eggs instead of a flat of 30, because the cartons of 18 fit in my hard sided insulated bags.
There’s a couple of pounds of butter, because we ran out completely. I also got a 2L each of milk and oat milk.
Then there was the box of mandarins that were on sale, and a cabbage and onion for the haluski.
I wasn’t planning on getting meat, but took advantage of sales to get a pork roast, a couple of packages of breakfast sausages and hot dog wieners. I also picked up a garlic sausage, made by a local company, and dried salami sausage for my husband to snack on. The sushi was my breakf… er… lunch for the drive home.
While my daughter did do some bread baking, I picked up more bread products. A couple of packages of mini garlic Naan, a loaf of sourdough, a couple of loaves of marble rye, and some hot dog buns.
Between the sales and my points card, I saved $44.71, or 20%. I could have used my points to get $10 off, too, but I decided to save that for another time.
So, there we have it. A total of 36 items, almost all on sale.
It was enough to pull up to the house to unload. After everything was in the house and I headed out to park the truck in the garage, I spotted the adorableness.
The little tuxedo staring out the other side window is also feral. There is another tuxedo, even smaller, that is less feral and I’ve even been able to pick it up and snuggle it a bit. I have suspicions about that, though. I think it might be at least partially deaf, and possibly have vision issues. Maybe I’m just paranoid, after what happened with Button over time, but it seems the tiny tuxedo’s eyes are dilated more than they should be, all the time. If it’s at all like Button, that would mean it can see shadows and movement, but not much else.
Or, it could just be that it was very scared when I picked it up.
We still have an ongoing Canada Post strike right now, but they have moved from a full strike to rotating strikes, so mail is starting to get through. With that in mind, I placed an order with Amazon last night. One of the things I picked up was an outdoor cat shelter (not an affiliate link).
This is something I’ve looked at in the past and rejected, as there is no way they’d handle our winters. However, we now have the catio and it’s winterized. I am thinking of setting it up inside there, along with the box nests that are already in there. I will just have to find something to put under it, so it’s not directly on the ground, just in case water pools inside again in the spring. It is waterproof, insulated and self heating. Between that and being inside the winterized catio, it should provide better shelter – and a private hiding place – for the most feral cats. Who knows. Adam, Sprout and Sprout’s clone baby might actually start using it, instead of disappearing into the outer yard until feeding time.
Oh!! I just thought of a name for Sprout’s clone baby.
Sprig.
Both are still completely feral. Sprout’s fluffy orange and white is also feral, but is at least willing to come closer and I’ve even managed to sneak a pet or two as he runs by.
Speaking of the more feral cats, as I was driving into the yard, I spotted a cat running across by the driveway by the pump shack, disappearing into the tall grass. I didn’t recognize it.
If this works out, we might get a second one for the garage. Pinky does use the isolation shelter, but at night, I think she is once again retreating to the rafters in the garage, above the truck. If we had some sort of self heating shelter in there that would be better or her.
Best of all, of course, would be for her to get spayed and adopted out, but that might take a while longer. The rescue is still working with the six they took from us not long ago.
Meanwhile, we need to work on socializing the littles! At least they have the shelters. Right now, we’re supposedly 7C/45F, but with the wind chill, it feels like -5C/23F. We are under an ongoing wind warning, with some areas expecting gusts up to 90kph/56mph.
I’m glad I was able to make the small shop today, at least, even if it did mean fighting the wind the whole way home! We’re good for a while, even if the truck ends up needing work and the Costco trip gets delayed.
Today was definitely a full day! I was able to both head into the city for the stock up shop, plus get winter sowing and garden clean up done. The garden stuff will be in its own post, though.
I headed out early, though I did wait until it was light out, first. The deer are very active right now. Sunrise is at about quarter past 8 now, and sunset at about quarter past 6, so I didn’t have a lot of daylight hours to work with!
My first stop for today was the Walmart. I did get breakfast there, which cost a whole $13.00 (I rounded up for the donation option). There wasn’t a lot I planned to get at Walmart, though. Basically, just cat food.
This is what $181.09 looks like.
That’s 7 items in that cart. There’s two cases of wet cat food.
The paper towels were on sale, so I got a package. I picked up some 30″x36″ puppy pads. The dry cat food actually went down in price. The wet cat food did not.
While driving in, I started getting notices on my truck’s onboard computer that my water fluid was low. It kept turning on, over and over. Very annoying! Anyhow, I picked up some all season washer fluid, rated to -40C/-40F.
That’s it. Seven items at almost $200, and that was taking advantage of cheaper prices!
My next stop was Canadian Tire. Yesterday, I noticed one of my headlights was out, so I picked up a new low beam headlight, along with a couple of bags of stove pellets for cat litter. That totaled $39.17, but I decided to use my Canadian Tire dollars, so it didn’t cost me anything. Instead, when I headed out, I stopped at a gas station and put in $50, until I can do a fill at Costco. That’s when I reset my trip meter, which is currently about 1900km since my last end of the month fill (we didn’t go to Costco last month).
I did have a weird thing happen with the truck. As I was leaving Walmart, I started getting an alarm dinging, the “slippery” icon showed up on my dash, and the onboard computer told me my stabilization system was turned off. Then it told me my traction system was off. Then it told me to service my stabilization, then traction, systems.
Then all the low washer fluid warning came on and all the other warnings went away.
Now, it could be a sensor thing again. GM vehicles are apparently notorious for sensor problems. How am I supposed to know if a warning is for real or not?
Meanwhile, we still need to replace the inner handle on the driver’s side door, replace three more tire sensors and, when I get the oil change we are due for, we need to find out where there is a slow leak happening. I’ve had to top up our oil a couple of times, since our last oil change, and that is WITH the leak-stop additive.
So before I headed into the Canadian Tire, I sent a text to our mechanic. I told him I was going to book an oil change soon, but then I got these warnings (which did not happen again for the rest of the trip). We simply can’t afford any more fixes, after the huge expenses we had this past month. I told him it might be time to talk about trading the truck in for another vehicle. It would have to be something that would give us lower monthly payments. We may end up getting a car instead of a truck.
*sigh*
We shall see. He got back to me and I now have an appointment next week for the oil change.
Fun stuff.
Which means that, while we won’t have to skip our Costco shopping trip again, it will have to be a bare bones trip. With that in mind, my next stop was Superstore.
I actually did all right there!
This is what $195.31 looks like.
I focused on somewhat on protein on this trip.
From the top, there’s a large no-name container of peanut butter; my husband has been going through the peanut butter a lot, lately. There’s a big bag of penne pasta, and a Monster energy drink for the drive home.
From dairy, I only got a giant block of Old Cheddar cheese. The Oat Milk I got for my daughters is in the natural foods section.
In the frozen section, there’s two bags of perogies and a bag of mixed vegetables.
Not much in produce. A bag of “ugly” avocados. There were 7 avocados in a $6 bag, so that is a really good deal these days. I also got a small back of seedless red grapes.
With meats, I got a box of frozen chicken nuggets and two boxes of brand name chicken nuggets and strips. Those are mostly for my husband. All were on sale. I spotted some bacon on sale and grabbed a packages.
Chicken drumsticks were an excellent price, and I ended up getting three packages. My husband won’t eat those, though. He can’t tolerate meat with bones in them anymore.
There’s a package of pork and beef breakfast sausages and a package of pork tenderloin. They weren’t on sale, but were some of the best meat prices I saw today. For the girls, I got a frozen pink salmon and a fresh whole trout, both on sale. I also grabbed a pack of sandwich meats, half turkey, half ham. There are two packs of the torpedo buns we love so much (Italian buns, on the receipt) and a loaf of sliced sourdough bread. Last of all, I remembered to grab a couple of bottles of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier.
I believe that came out to 27 items in total.
So the two grocery stops totaled $376.40. Add in the $13 for breakfast, plus $50 for gas, plus the $39.17 that was paid for with Canadian Tire dollars, I purchased $478.57 in goods today.
Oh! I almost forgot. On the way home, I stopped at the feed store and picked up two 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats. That cost $124.99 in total. That brings the total for the day to $603.56 Of that, about $275 was cat food, puppy pads and litter pellets.
Well, one thing will be different at Costco. Since I got the kibble already, I’ll just need to get more canned cat food and maybe more puppy pads. They have a very good price for puppy pads, but only have one size. I’ve found the XXL size to be much more useful. It sucks that we even had to buy the things, when we’ve got litter boxes all over the place.
Anyhow.
That’s the status of the shopping!
Time to enjoy the supper my daughters have made, and then do and update on how much got done in the garden today. I’m rather pleased!
I’m not sure why CPP Disability came in a day early, but I wasn’t about to complain. I just took advantage of it and made a run into the city.
With the work being done on the truck, plus the door replacement (still no word on the new, correct size, door that was ordered), it’s going to be a tight month, and we will be skipping Costco. Instead, I did the usual Walmart and Canadian Tire run, then his a Superstore along the same route.
My first stop was the Walmart. This is what $168.62 looks like.
Yeah. Not much.
The most expensive item was a box of 150 puppy pads. The Costco box is 100, but the pads are the same size.
Then there was the 9kg bag of kibble. I got just the one, for the inside cats, because I was planning to hit the feed store for 40 pounds bags for the outside cats.
Then there were two cases of 32 cans of wet cat food. One is for the outside cats, but I only use one can a day, mixes with hot water and powdered pumpkin seeds, which I then used to soften their morning kibble.
Last of all was a package of toilet paper that was on sale. Oh, and a $2 donation at the till.
So… five times (not counting the donation) was over $150.
*sigh*
My next stop was the Canadian Tire. This is what $0 looks like.
I looked all over but couldn’t find the sump pump hose I was looking for. I finally snagged someone and asked. It turned out they should have been in an empty shelf I’d walked past several times. Because the labels were so low to the ground, I never saw them. After looking it up, the guy said he would get one for me from their warehouse. When he came back, he had three, so he could restock the shelf.
I was just walking away with my one in the cart when I decided I’d better get a second one, just in case.
While going through the checkout, I paid for two bags of litter pellets, where were set up in the exit vestibule, so I picked those up on the way out.
I use my Canadian Tire dollars to pay for the entire thing, so what would have cost $53.72, cost me nothing.
After the Canadian Tire, I hit a Domo to fill the tank. The price of regular was $1.299, but it was Thursday, which was 4¢ off per liter day. Grand total to fill was $76.34
Last of all was the Superstore. This is what $284.73 looks like… sort of!
There’s actually more in there than it appears, as the bread is covering some things.
Under grocery, there’s a large jug of cooking oil, a giant bag of elbow macaroni, some mayo and a packet of rice noodles for the girls. The Monster was for me to drink during the drive home.
Under dairy, there’s a flat of eggs, and large blocks of Old Cheddar and Mozza cheese. We used to be able to get blocks that size at Costco, but they don’t seem to carry them anymore. I got 6 pounds of butter (they were on sale, but with a limit of one, so 5 of them were regular price). In the frozen section, I got two big bags of potato and cheese perogies and a back of mixed vegetables.
The bulk chocolate almonds were to snack on, on the way home. It was a very small bag.
The only produce I got on this trip was two bags of avocadoes that were at a very good price.
In meats and seafood, I got fish fillets for the girls, chicken thighs and drumsticks, a large ham, a frozen pork roast, a package of pork ribs and another of pork tenderloins. I don’t know why it’s under “meal replacement”, but I also got a hot rotisserie chicken.
I also picked up a frozen turkey that was free with a purchase over $300, so I wanted to make sure I reached that $300 mark, even though I tend to round up when I keep a tally in my head.
In the bakery, I got a couple of loaves of light rye bread and a back of torpedo buns. I don’t know what it is about their torpedo buns (labelled as “buns Italian” on the receipt) but the entire family absolutely loves them, and you get a LOT for the $5!
When I got to the till, though, I discovered I had rounded up too much, and the total was under $300! No free turkey. After finding out how much I was short, I went to a display I’d been standing next to while waiting in line and got two different tins of moon cakes; one with double yolks. That put me over, and I got my free turkey – and a rare treat for the family.
I did have things go a bit weird while I was in line, though. Because the lines were so long, I pushed my cart forward in line, then stood beside it, so I wouldn’t be blocking the aisle. I intended to step around when it came time to move forward and unload.
An older woman then got in line behind me, pushing her cart forward and forward and forward, until the end of her cart was under the handle of mine. Strange, but okay. We started chatting at one point, when she commented that she has to watch her cart. She forgets how long it is and has a habit of bumping into people. !! Okay.
Then things moved along and I was able to move my cart forward to the belt and start unloading.
She pushed her cart right up under my cart’s handle again.
Once the cart was empty and the customers ahead of me were done, I moved forward to the cashier, giving her my loyalty card.
I’ve been using that card for years, but it came up as not activated. I’ll have to phone them to find out what’s going on.
Once I had my card back, I pushed my cart to the end and started reloading it (I bag my stuff at my vehicle) as quickly and efficiently as I could, so it wouldn’t build up on the belt. When it came time for the total and to ring in my free turkey, she let me know I hadn’t reached the $300 mark. So I decided to grab the moon cakes.
No one in the line was willing to just pass them over to me, so I had to squeeze my way past the old lady’s cart to get through and get them, then squeeze back again.
She made zero effort to move her cart closer to the till. I’m no skinny minny, but even a thin person would have had a hard time getting by.
Whatever. I got them, the cashier rang them through while I continued to put things in my cart.
The old lady had moved forward and was standing right at where I needed to be to pay.
Both the cashier and I told her I needed to reach the PIN pad. She moved back…
But pushed her cart forward.
In the end, I had to first move my loaded cart forward, then move the old lady’s cart to the end of the belt, where my cart had been, just so I could get back in to use the PIN pad.
The thing that made it seem weirder is that I got no impression that she was someone dealing with cognitive issues or some such, and her comment about running into people showed she was aware. She may have been older than me, but probably not by all that much. Maybe 10 years or so? I don’t like to guess, since I have a mother who’s 94 but could easily pass as being in her 70’s. It just seemed… almost deliberate.
Maybe I’m just too used to dealing with my mother, who absolutely would do stuff like that, deliberately.
Anyhow.
So I got all that, it came to under $300 total, and I got my free turkey!
That cart looks pretty empty for that much, but most of the meat in there is covered, along with all the butters.
Once that was all loaded up, it was time to head home. I took the route that would take me through my mother’s town, instead of my usual route from this location, because I knew I’d have to make a pit stop at a gas station just outside the city. I was well on my way when my cell phone started to ring.
There’s pretty much only one place that calls my cell phone, so I pulled over to answer.
Yup. It was home care.
There was a cancellation and they did have my mother’s med assists covered by someone else, but that someone else wouldn’t be able to get to my mother’s until 9:45pm for her bed time med assist. The scheduler was concerned that would be too late for her.
I felt she was right – and since I was on my way home from the city and would be driving through my mother’s town anyhow, I decided I would stop by. Home care isn’t allowed to do this, but I can get her meds out and set them up for her in advance. Her supper med assist would come as usual, but no one would have to come for the bed time assist.
That worked out and she was able to cancel the super late bed time assist. I then phoned my mother and – making sure she knew I was pulled over on the side of he road and couldn’t talk long – let her know I’d be stopping by soon. I also made sure she knew I had groceries in the truck and couldn’t stay long.
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to having a cover on the truck box again. I had the frozen stuff and all the cold meats in covered insulated bags in the truck box. Heavy enough I had no worried that they’d blow around or slide around, but it would have been very easy for someone walking by to just reach in and grab a bag or two, heavy as they might be.
When I got to my mother’s, I made sure to bring a bag along. After getting her meds ready and we were chatting, I went into her kitchen and started taking down the stockpile of Pepto my brother got for her, that made her so very angry, into the bag I’d brought. She asked what I was doing and I told her, I’m taking them because they are bothering her. She asked if I was taking them here to the farm, and I said yes. She then pointed out the obvious, that it made no difference if they were at her place or our place and I just said, they’re bothering her.
She started going into her spiel about how these are medicine, they don’t last, they need to be kept cool, etc. I looked at the expiry date and told her, these are good for more than two years (it’s actually a best before date, not an expiry date, but I wasn’t about to try and explain the difference to her). They don’t need to go into the fridge, because they’re a mineral. My daughter even has a piece in her collection. That got her curious, so I looked up pictures of bismuth – the only active ingredient listed in Pepto – to show her. They are such gorgeous stones, too. I think that sort of mollified her, but who knows for how long!
She did ask me to leave one bottle in her cupboard; they came packed in pairs, and my brother had one pair unwrapped, with the open one now in her fridge. I took the time to show her that the only difference between what my brother got for her and what I’d picked up for her from the pharmacy (after checking the labels to confirm) is that I had picked up extra strength, and the ones my brother got were regular strength. That gave me the opportunity to remind her to use the cup they come with to get the proper dose, instead of just using a teaspoon, like she usually does. I’m kinda hoping it sunk in, but it’s hard to say.
Then I headed home, with six bottles of Pepto, and my brother no longer has to worry that my mother will follow through with her immediate idea of selling the “extra”.
I just quickly looked it up. The twin packs of Pepto at Superstore, where my brother found some in stock, cost about $25 each, before taxes, and that’s a much better price that buying them in singles. My brother spent over $100 on Pepto for my mother, so she wouldn’t run out. I think, if she knew that, she probably would have gotten even angrier.
*sigh*
Anyhow, that’s our stock up shopping trip for the month. Anything else we need will be smaller trips throughout the month for fresh stuff. It’s a shame the garden had so little production this year, as there’s little to supplement, and nothing to freeze or can. Ah, well. As I finish clearing up the beds, I’ll be harvesting both winter sown and spring sown carrots. It should be interesting to compare!
I’m still holding out hope for at least a couple of winter squash before the cold kills them. My daughter and I headed out to cover them again for the night while I was still writing this. It’s not supposed to get as cold as last night, so we didn’t cover the summer squash, peppers or remaining eggplant this time. We’re actually supposed to warm up again, and even get pretty hot, over the next week, so there’s hope for those winter squash, still!
But I digress.
We didn’t get a whole lot on this trip, compared to a typical Costco trip, but I did find quite a lot of prices seemed to be better at Superstore. They also have more selection and variety.’
Plus, they have torpedo buns. 😄
I wonder if it’s worthwhile to try going to their Wholesale Club location. The last time I went there, the prices didn’t really seem to be any better in general, and some of their meat was looking… questionable… but they do have things there that aren’t in their regular stores. It would mean an extra trip to the city, though, and I just don’t like doing those like I used to! Plus, if we make them too often, the trips are no longer worth the cost of gas to do them.
I do have a trip to the city on Oct. 1, though. That’s my appointment at the sports injury clinic to possibly get an injection for my left hip. Then there’s another trip, the week after, as my daughter finally gets to see an endocrinologist. Ah, well.
I’m really hoping to be able to hibernate as much as possible this winter!
The Re-Farmer
Addendum: I completely forgot! You may have noticed that I got no beef at all on this trip. This is an example of why.
That’s three chunks of Oxtail. OXTAIL. At over $30/kg. They did have other packages that were less per kg, but they had no meat on them. This used to be among the cheapest of cuts. Even cheaper than stew meat or ground beef. Now, it’s right up there with steak. Crazy!
With the cat cave – their usual favourite spot – unavailable last night, these kittens took up the beds inside the water bowl shelter, instead. I checked inside the cat house, which has three cat beds in it, and only saw one kitten in there. I actually thought it might have been another loss, but when I tried to poke around the carpet strips over the entry, it moved, so it was just napping. *phew*
Today we decided to do my husband’s birthday take out, and his choice was our favourite Chinese food place. He actually would have preferred pizza, but his lactose intolerance has been getting pretty bad. So this afternoon, after checking to make sure they were open today, my daughter and I headed into town.
Sir Robin and Eyelet followed me to the truck and would NOT leave! My daughter came back from opening the gate and tried to shoo them away, only for Eyelet to go under the truck, while I was in it, getting ready to back out! She stopped me and started looking for him, and found him grooming himself – directly behind a tire! Eyelet is deaf, which makes it more challenging. By the time I could safely back out, she had both of them, one under each arm!
We really, really need to find a home for Eyelet, if he’s going to survive!
Once in town, we first stopped at the restaurant to place our order (and pick up an up to date take out menu), letting them know we’d be at least half an hour before coming back to pick it up. Then we went to the grocery store to pick up some other celebratory things, including lactose free ice cream for my husband. My daughter are also lactose intolerant, but they are good with using the digestive enzymes for that.
That done, we got the food – we ordered enough to feed us for a couple of days, at least! – then headed home. Once home, my daughters took care of putting things away and getting everything ready while I popped outside to feed the yard cats early.
As I came out the Old Kitchen into the sun room, I disturbed a big skunk.
This skunk has been a regular since it was little, and it would always hide under the counter shelf, instead of running out the door.
It is no longer little.
It still thinks it can fit under the counter shelf.
After much scrambling and flattening of its butt, it finally squeezed itself under the shelf.
That done, we settled in for our celebratory take out. We’ll be doing cake and ice cream later, though maybe after the girls and I have gone out to cover garden beds for the night.
We did get interrupted with a phone call, though.
A happy interruption.
It was the company that’s replacing our front door for us. He’d emailed me while I was in town and I hadn’t checked my email yet, so he called. It turns out the installers can come out here tomorrow morning, and he wanted to know if that worked for us.
We’ll make it work!!!!
So another task for today is to find a way of barricade the entry, so no cats will get out while there is no door at all!
Hopefully, there will be no issues with the stucco and they won’t find anything bizarre when they remove the old, cracked frame.
It will be so good to have a solid door there again! Bonus if they can put the storm door back on again, too.
It will be so good to have a winter with no frost on the bottom of the door. On a really cold year, the frost would be up to the bottom hinge on one side, too.
It’s also going to be a major financial hit. When we had to remove the old door because it wouldn’t close anymore, and I mentioned it to my mother, she had told me to let her know how much it would be, hinting that she would help pay for it. Because God has been so good to her and she had the money (she does, thanks to my brother taking care of her finances for her; God has blessed her with an amazing son!). When I did find out what it would cost, and we made the down payment, I did end up telling her how much we still needed to pay. Only because she was asking about related things. When she heard there was still another $2700. When she heard that, she scoffed and basically accused them of cheating or something, because there was no way it was that expensive. I told her, my brother had replaced a door on their house (on the property that they sold, almost a year ago now), it was the same type of door, he didn’t replace the frame, and he did the work himself, and it still cost them over $2000. I didn’t even bother mentioning that prices have gone up since then. She refused to believe me. So… unless my brother talks to her or something (he’s already paying for so many other things here, they’re in no position to pay for this, too), there won’t be any help from her end.
And we will still have almost $750 we’ll need to pay for our insurance claim repairs on the truck, at the end of September – and that’s after the autobody company went out of their way to reduce the cost to us as much as they could. We’ve got a $500 deductible, and the rest is the “betterment” cost to replace the box cover.
So many years, we managed to stay debt free, and then everything just went nuts in the past year. *sigh* It wouldn’t be so bad, if we didn’t have the truck payments. They got the cost down as much as they could, but it was still more than our budget could handle. Add in how expensive everything is getting, and it just keeps getting worse. I could literally go into town and get myself a job within the week (not that I would want to do that over the winter) but anything I made would just be deducted from my husband’s disability payments, and put his health insurance at risk.
Well, we’ll figure it out.
Adopting out a dozen or so cats, inside and out, would help! 😄
We really need to do something about having so many cats.
I headed to the city shortly after 10am, stopping at a gas station at my mother’s town along the way, only to pick up a drink and a road snack to tide me over. I tried a new brand of beef jerky.
I should have gotten the hint when there was no price. In fact, none of the beef jerky, nor most of their snack mixes have prices on display.
It turned out to be almost $21.
Along with the super large Monster energy drink I got, it came to just over $26 after taxes and enviro fees.
It was good jerky, at least, but I won’t be buying it again! I only had a few pieces and the rest is in its sealed bag in the console where we keep things like water bottles, road snacks, extra tissue boxes, extra wet wipes, etc.
When I got to the city, my first stop was at a mall for “breakfast” in the food court. I ended up getting a three item Chinese food meal and a drink – about $16 and change – but only ate half of it. The other half was my supper when I got home.
Before going to the Costco, I swung through the Dollarama that’s right by the food court (I don’t think I’ve ever checked out the rest of the mall) and the doors I parked near. I ended up getting a few things there; four shoe-box sized storage boxes with lids, a refill bottle of liquid soap, and a 4L jug of cleaning vinegar. They have the 10% acidity vinegar that I’d been looking for. The grocery store had only 7% acidity cleaning vinegar. (4% is cooking vinegar and 5% is pickling vinegar) The 10% is noticeably better at descaling our kettle, that’s for sure!
I also picked up a couple more clear vinyl table protectors for the garden. Or for winterizing cat shelters. Either one. I’ll probably pick up more before the snow flies.
I ended up buying another hard sized bag to carry the stuff, and my breakfast leftovers, to the truck. I have lots in the truck but hadn’t expected to get things like the vinegar or soap refills, so I hadn’t brought any with me. Usually, I just take my cart to the truck and pack things up there, but the Dollarama carts can’t leave the store.
That done, I finally drove the couple of blocks over to the Costco, with my first stop being for gas. Their gas was at $1.329 instead of the $1.449 everywhere else in the city, so they were pretty busy! I was just under half a tank, and my fill cost $61.54
Once that was done, I was fortunate enough to find a parking spot right away. Yay! With the long weekend coming up, the lot was pretty full.
This is a “family size” package of stew meat. We used to get these all the time. I remember getting this size for under $20. Now, that same size pack costs in the $60 range – and this was NOT the biggest pack in the display.
This is what I DID get.
I got six 9.1kg/20lb bags of kibble. They had the 11kg size, but the Kirkland brand is a better price/gram. I also got a 48 pack of wet cat food and more puppy pads. The cat supplies all together totaled $223.32 before taxes.
*sigh*
The other stuff on the flat cart they scanned included a case of Coke Zero for my husband and I, a case of Monster that my daughter will pay me back for, a 3 pk of oat milk for my daughters, toilet paper, paper towels and a double flat of 60 eggs.
For meats, I got a chub of ground beef and a pork blade roast. I got a pork loin, and plan to try something different with it. I was able to find and get curing salt a couple of weeks ago, so I’m going to try curing it. I also got a couple of 3 pks of Spam (that’s sure gone up in price, too!).
In dairy, I got 4 pounds of butter and Old Cheddar cheese.
For breads, I got two 2pks of rye bread and two packs of wraps. There is also a big case of spaghetti, a big jar of mayonnaise and popcorn. I remembered to get some fabric softener sheets for the drier; that three pack will last use a few years. Last of all, I got a Tuxedo cake. My husband’s birthday is in the beginning of September, so he’ll be getting his cake early!
And… that’s it.
That’s $619.41 before taxes. Of that, $259.94 was actual food for us (not counting beverages).
For the month.
Good grief.
True, we did do an earlier stock up trip at the international grocery store where the only non-food items were some hair accessories, on sale, for my daughter. Costco is also the place were we get the big stuff, like the paper products, along with the cat supplies, and typically bulk sized meats.
Kitten interruption: I went to chase raccoons out of the sun room. The foundling kittens were all crying in distress. No sign of a mama, and the creche mothers weren’t going into the cat cage, though Lady Hypotenose was nursing 5 or 6 older kittens in the middle of the sun room. We don’t have kitten formula, so my daughter and I ended up making “kitten soup” with a can of wet cat food and fed them, one at a time in the bathroom, using a syringe. They were confused by the whole thing, but were very hungry. In my last check on them, they had settled in together in the cat bed and seemed to be calming down with full little bellies.
On the down side, I think there are still four very stupid little raccoons jammed between the counter shelf and the window!
Back to our regular programming…
So this trip did go over our Costco budget, even though we got less than typical. Frustrating. Especially since we’re supposed to be stocking up extra in the pantry to tide us over for the winter, should we get snowed in or something again.
*sigh*
Well, it is what it is. We’ll work things out. We’ve been in tighter spots before.
Excuse me while I go chase some skunks out of the sun room…
As soon as I get up from my office chair, or go near it, Clarence runs ahead of me, jumps onto the chair and does this. As if to say, you can’t be mad at me! I’m adorable!
Then he goes all rubbery when I try to take him off.
Sorry, Clarence. You ain’t THAT cute! 😂
I fooled him this time, though. I didn’t need the chair. He was so disappointed. 🤣
Today, my daughter and I went into the city for our first stock up shopping trip. This is the one where we hit multiple stores along one strip.
Just as we were pulling out of our driveway, though, my cell phone started ringing. My first thought was, oh, no. It’s home care calling to say they can’t do my mother’s med assist.
My daughter was thinking the same thing.
I was able to pull over immediately – one advantage of living off of gravel roads! It turned out to be the autobody place. They wanted to book the truck in for the insurance claim repairs. That is now scheduled for the 26th to the 30th of September, and they have a courtesy car for me, so we can still do our stock up shopping. Yay!
Our next stop was at the gas station in town, where we picked up $40 in gas. Prices jumped 10¢/L overnight, a few days ago. Since the town nearest us is a resort town, they have the same prices as the city, at $1.449/L My CAA card gave me a whole 83¢ discount. Better than nothing, I suppose.
From there, we headed to the city and our first stop was at Walmart. The main thing we needed there was cat food.
This is what $200.23 looks like.
We did get a few other things to, of course.
For the dry kibble, we got a different brand because we could get three bags, about 21kg (a little over 40 pounds) for about the same price as two bags of our usual brand, which would have been 18kg total (a little over 36 pounds). Those were for the outside cats. We also got two 32 packs of wet cat food, one for the inside cats, one for the outside cats.
There was a really good price on some boxed cereal my daughters like, so we grabbed two of those, along with some feminine hygiene products I’ll be paid back for later. We got a 4 pack of Monster drinks for now; we’ll be getting a case at Costco (which I will be paid back for as well).
I grabbed some water flavours for my husband, and a pound of butter, as we were out this morning. We’ll stock up on butter at Costco, in a couple of days.
That’s it. That’s $200.
*sigh*
Our next stop was the Canadian Tire, with a side trip to Michaels. My older daughter needed a certain size of envelop we haven’t been able to find anywhere and really hoped we’d find them at the Michael’s! These are to fit some prints, among other things, my daughter sends to some of her higher tier Patreon supporters. They come in two sizes and we haven’t been able to find anything that fits both!
Thankfully, they did have a size that worked. We got her two packs of 50. That should last a while! They cost about $36, but I will be reimbursed for those, too.
Next, we drove across the lot to the Canadian Tire and picked up two bags of stove pellets for the litters. They weren’t in the usual place, so I asked staff. They directed me to the BBQ pellets. Which are fancy woods and really expensive. I found someone else and she tried to direct me to the same area. After looking it up on the devices all the staff carried, she finally saw what I was talking about, but had no idea where they were.
They turned out to be in the exit vestibule.
All we needed were two bags! That came out to $16.78.
Finally, we were off to the international grocery store. It shares a parking lot with a Dollarama, so we went into there, first. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but they did have more of those metal fence posts that I am currently using to fence around our corn and squash bed. I got four more, for a grand total of $21.25
Looking at the receipt, though, I see they have them listed as “flower stand”. ??? I have no idea how they would be used as a stand for flowers. I just tried looking them up and, after tweaking the search terms a bit, finally found them – being sold as fence posts. Which is what they’ll be used for!
Then we finally went into the international grocery store. It was past lunch time by then, so the first order of business was food! I got a three item dim sum meal that was so loaded, I only ate half of it, and the rest will be my supper. My daughter got some fresh sushi (they were in the process of making more while we watched) which turned out to be available for free with points, so I used them. So my meal, plus our drinks, totaled just over $16.
This place is where we get a number of things we don’t find anywhere else – at least not anywhere we go regularly. Since we have to make special trips into the city, we won’t have the luxury of hunting down specialty shops, nor harder to get to locations. I was happy that we made it today, because it was the last day for some really good deals.
This is what $248.54 looks like.
Pretty much everything in there was on sale.
The main thing I really wanted to get was the frozen sushi grade Ahi tuna. They were only $1.99/100grams. I ended up getting to two biggest frozen chunks of tuna they had left. My daughters really loved it, the last time they had a sale like this and I was able to get one. They enjoyed it both raw and as steaks, lightly seared.
The other proteins we got was some regular ground beef, applewood smoked bacon slab and regular smoked bacon slab, which was on sale. I also got a salmon for the girls that wasn’t one sale, except that it was a deal connected with my loyalty card’s special offers, so that got price reduced when we scanned it through.
This store has an excellent cheese counter. They had lactose free brie that was one a “buy two and save” sale. I also got a pesto gouda, which is something new to try. Yes, it was on sale, too.
Let’s see. What else…
There is a bag of pearl barley – something only my husband and I like in this household. It was not on sale. I can’t believe these now cost over $4 each! We got the soy sauce my husband likes and, after much searching, my daughter found some liquid smoke I remembered to pick up, for something I want to try later on.
There is a clamshell of nectarines that was on sale, and the sale for the instant milk tea was so good, I got two. The Kraft Mac and Cheese was on sale, as were the granola bars and Greek yogurt. My daughter also spotted some hair accessories on sale, so we picked those up as well.
Finally, we got things for immediate eating when we got home. A huge Lumber Jack sandwich for my husband (that’ll be at least two meals!), plus my daughter chose three different sushi for herself and her sister that was part of a multi-discount, so they came out to only $5 each. Last of all were a couple of drinks for the road.
So my total for all that was $248.54 after taxes. I got bonus points that largely made up for what I used to get my daughter’s lunch sushi for free, plus I got $54.94 taken off with loyalty card sales. It doesn’t include the savings from items on sale that are sold by weight. Including those, it was probably closer to $65-$70 off.
In the end, counting the items not pictured, gas and lunch, our total expenditure for the day came out to just over $578, some of which I will be paid back for.
There were a lot of things we would have liked to get. They were even on sale. The problem was, what is considered a sale price now for these things is what used to be a high regular price, just a year or two ago! We stayed in budget, but even if we wanted to go over budget, we would not have been willing to pay those prices, sale or no sale.
It should be interesting to see what the prices are like at Costco, when we go in a couple of days!
Tomorrow, however, I’m heading out again, this time to my doctor’s appointment. If things go as I hope, I’ll be getting X-rays on my left hip to find out what the heck is going on there of late. It has actually gotten better, in that I can put weight on my left leg to go up a step or two, but it’s still really unstable. While I am ambidextrous with most things, I’m left dominant. Which means I’m more likely to step forward with my left leg rather than my right. I made the mistake of stepping up a curb with my left leg today. I really should not have done that! It messed me up enough that, even when I was stepping up with my right leg, I needed to grip my daughter’s hand to stabilize me as I did it. I know I have bone spurs in both my hips, along with the OA. It could just be that the OA in my left hip has gotten worse.
No way to know without getting X-rays done.
I’m quite curious about what showed up in the X-rays of my left arm. They wouldn’t have called me in if everything was fine, but it can’t be too bad, or they would have had me either come in earlier, or told me to go to a hospital.
I’ll find out tomorrow!
Then it’s back to the city the day after, for the Costco shopping.
We need to focus on stocking up. I’m seeing more long range forecasts for this winter, and the general consensus seems to be a mild fall (ha!) and winter (double ha!), with lots of snow and blizzards. Which means a higher potential of getting getting snowed in.
At least this year, my brother’s equipment is all out here. Including snow blowers and a snow clearing tractor attachment. None of which we can use ourselves, though. Some need repairs, and some have “tricks” to using them, that only my brother knows! I expect they’ll be out here pretty much every weekend, once their grandson is back home. I know my brother has a lot of stuff he wants to get working on, including repairing a tractor that got damaged when they were moving their stuff out here. Plus, things need to be organized, just to be able to get at some of the equipment. When their property sold, they only had so much time to bring everything they were keeping out here, and were just shoving things wherever they could find the space! It’s not even something we can help him with, either. With their “new” mobile home/caravan they recently picked up, they will at least have a winter worthy “home” to use in the winter, though being an older model, even that has some work my brother wants to do on it to make sure it’s winterized and no rodents or wasps or anything like that can get in.
So while we can expect to have a much better winter when it comes to things like snow clearing, that can only happen while my brother is here. Which means there is still the potential to get snowed in. At least the truck is better able to get through the snow than our previous vehicle, but even that only goes so far.
That is Lady Hypotenose, in the wee hours of the night, tending her now five kittens! I saw them on the camera earlier, swirling around her like a vortex, except the new baby, who was hunting nip. I look a couple of minute later and there she was with three of her babies (the fourth one ran out of frame), and her newly adopted baby, nursing them all in the middle of the sun room.
What a good mama!
When I went to feed them this morning, they were all over the place, but when I came back after finishing my rounds, they were all gone! Every one of them! I couldn’t see them anywhere in the sun room!
I went out to check the cat house and various other spots, but nothing.
Then I came back to the sun room and found a single kitten, going for the food. I had no idea where it came from.
So I went into the old kitchen and watched through the door with the missing screen, and spotted a kitten squeeze its way out from under the counter shelf.
*phew* What a relief! I was afraid Lady Hypotenose changed her mind about keeping her kittens in the sun room!
After that, I had a bit of time before I needed to head out to my mother’s, to take her for her doctor’s appointment. She really struggled to use the stool and get into the truck but, unfortunately, this was not an appointment that could be done over the phone.
We were able to go through a whole bunch of things during the appointment, from going over the results of her various blood tests (all is fine), talking about her leg swelling with a dosage change and confirming that yes, she has toe fungus, and getting a prescription for that. My mother brought up her frequent complaint about dry mouth, that happens only when she’s sleeping. I’ve been telling her, she’s probably sleeping with her mouth open. I get it, too, sometimes. So when the doctor asked some questions and came to the same conclusion, my mother was right ticked off!
I think the doctor was ticked off, too – or at least shocked – but not at my mother. I brought up the referral for another mental health assessment, since it’s been more than a year, and home care needs it for paneling my mother for a nursing home. The doctor looked up the last penal report and was shocked it wasn’t enough. She wrote a referral for the assessment, but also wrote a letter to the home care coordinator (I’m glad I keep her business card in my phone case, because she needed the contact information!). I brought up that my mother really shouldn’t be living alone, and my mother added that she is having more trouble moving around and has to lean on furniture to get around he apartment.
I think the case coordinator is going to get a rather brusk letter about my mother’s conditions, and that she needs to be in care.
There were a few other things, some of which I had to explain to my mother as I brought her home. Normally, we would have stopped for lunch or something after the appointment, since we were on the road at lunch time, but with the changes in her prescription, I needed to get her bubble packs to the pharmacy.
My mother was so tired, she actually started to fall asleep during the drive!
Once I got her home, I went through the lock box and took some bubble packs out, leaving the new one that just got started today. My mom will stick to the same dose until that pack is done.
I also found a message from my daughter. The pharmacy had already called me on the land line, wanting to talk to me about my mother’s prescriptions! When I got there, I joked with the pharmacist that they are FAST! They were calling before I even got my mother home, yet!
They took the bubble packs to adjust them, but the new prescription for my mother’s toes as another issue. I was warned right away that it was expensive, while she looked up if it was covered by our province’s prescription insurance.
It wasn’t.
My mother had given me cash, and asked me to get some more Voltaren as well, since she’s using it on both her knees and her back now. Between that and the new prescription, it wasn’t enough, so I paid the balance.
When I got back to my mom’s and went over everything with her, and told her I’d covered about $50, she was furious. This little bottle was $50? she said, as she threw it across the table. No, it cost over $120. The $50 or so was what I covered.
Cue much ranting and raving about how it’s just toes, she didn’t need it, she didn’t want it.
She had been quite happy to get the prescription when we left the doctor’s, but I guess she expected it to be free, just like she did with the inhaler when I covered that for her, too.
It took a while to calm her down and give her the instructions on how to use it.
I suspect she will refuse to use it.
After all that, I was more than happy to leave. I still had my own errands to run at Walmart, since I was out, anyhow.
It had been raining off and on all day, and I even got warnings from home that it was pouring buckets. It wasn’t that heavy where I was, though, so the drive to the Walmart wasn’t too bad. I’m just happy to have the rain. We need it so badly!
Once I got to the Walmart, I could finally have my own lunch, too!
I didn’t have a large list, but it was enough to make the drive to Walmart worth it. Especially when it came to the cat food.
This is what $178.63 looks like.
Yeah. Not much there at all.
The most expensive items were the two bags of kibble, plus a case of wet cat food. I also got a box of pet stain/odour remover, to cat supplies alone were in the $100 range.
My husband requested water flavours, but they had only one flavour of his preferred type/brand, so he got three different types. I also grabbed more distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. He still has a good supply, but it’s a lot cheaper at Walmart, so I got extra.
There’s some coffee creamer for the girls, some cleaning vinegar and facial tissues, some powdered chicken bouillon, and some rye bread. They had an excellent price on corn on the cob, so I picked up a bunch.
And that’s it. That was almost $200
Ouch.
By the time I was heading home, it was late enough in the day that I asked my daughter to feed the outside cats. She tells me that all the kittens, except the two garage kittens, came to the house to eat, and she even got to pet some of the new littles! I’m glad because, by the time I was bringing in more cat food through the sun room, they were almost all hiding again.
The system that gave us all that wonderful rain today has passed us by and it seems like the main body of it will go right over where the huge fire across the lake is. Even with the rain, the air was still smoky. We might get a bit more rain tonight, but just barely.
I actually don’t have any appointments or planned errands for the next couple of weeks! I’m amazed. It’s been so long. Of course, there will be the usual unplanned stuff – trips to the dump, any new calls to cover my mother’s med assists for home care, stuff like that – but I’m otherwise actually going to be able to stay home for the next while!
What an amazing thing. I might actually get some progress done on various projects that had to be set aside!
I forgot. We’re coming up on a long weekend. Even though today is Thursday, Costco was insanely busy! When I was done, it took several minutes going further and further to the back of the store before I found the end of the line I needed. The self check out line was almost as long!
Thankfully, everything went quickly.
Before going to Costco, though, I made a stop at the mall nearby for breakfast, then made a quick run through the Dollarama. I found a few things for both kitchen and garden, totaling just over $35 – including a couple of boxes of McKenzie Seeds wildflower mix. I’m considering trying again in the same spot I tried winter sowing last year, only this time, I want to find some way to keep the cats from digging and rolling all over it, even though I never removed the leaf litter mulch. We really need more wildflowers for the pollinators. I’ve left the sections of the old garden area uncut because they were pretty much the only things blooming right now. Once they start dying back, I’ll start working on taming the jungle. I’m not seeing as many pollinators lately, though. The constant smoke from the wildflowers is causing them problems.
I also got a couple of metal pinwheels that are weather vanes, so they will turn with the direction of the wind to spin. I plan to set one beside the peas that are trying to recover, and another near the plum and apple saplings. The plastic pinwheels I have now don’t seem to catch the wind very well, but something that moves with the wind should work better to distract the deer.
I’m glad I didn’t stop to get a bit of gas on the way into the city. I normally put in just a few bucks if I’m expecting to drop below half a tank. I did stop at the gas station in my mother’s town along the way, but that’s because the truck informed me that I was low on washer fluid. The only fluid I have in the truck right now is for winter. Gas prices there were $1.349/L At Costco, it was $1.199/L!! There rest of the city was $1.339/L It cost me $67.15 to fill my tank.
When it comes to shopping at Costco, this is where we bulk buy most of our non-food items, so that took up a significant portion of the budget. This is what $636.55 looks like.
There were two things on my list I didn’t get, because Costco doesn’t carry them. Those are for the next Walmart trip. I lost count somewhere along the line, as I ended up going a bit over my budget for this shop, when I thought I was still under budget. Ah, well.
With the long receipt, I ended up taking two pictures of it.
Unfortunately WP messes one of them up, due to the different dimensions. You should be able to see it properly if you click on the image.
For the non-food stuff, we got:
scent free laundry detergent
puppy pads
four 9kg bags of dry kibble
one case of canned cat food
toilet paper
Shake ‘n’ Feed fertilizer (on sale)
a 2 pack of parchment paper
All of that cost $250 and change before taxes.
*sigh*
For beverages, there is a flat of Monster energy drink, which I will be paid back for, and a 3 pack of oat milk for the girls.
Then there’s the actual food:
spaghetti
Ramen noodles
2 pack of Honey Nut Cheerios (on sale)
2 jars of Hellman’s Mayo (the sale price made them cheaper than the Kirkland brand)
double flat of eggs (5 dozen)
4 pounds butter
Old Cheddar, 1 block
Mozzarella, 1 block
pork tenderlion
pork sausage (on sale)
two packs of drumsticks (on sale)
two rotisserie chickens (cheaper than raw, whole chickens)
two 2 packs of salad mix
Basmati rice
two 2 packs of rye bread
two 2 packs of wraps
1 bag hazelnuts
The food and drink part of the shop came to about $348 and change, before taxes.
What I didn’t get was beef. I checked out a fairly small flank steak, and it was over $88! A family pack of stew meat was over $43. They had a sale on ground beef, but they came in long chubs that all cost in the $60 range, before discount. Then there were the larger cuts of beef that were in the $200 plus, range. *choke* Even the pork is starting to creep up in price again.
We aren’t even going to be able to buy a beef share this year. Normally, we would have made payments throughout the year until they butchered in the fall. We already dropped from a quarter beef to an eighth, the last time we got a beef share, because of how tight our budget got once we had truck payments. We talked when I met to pick up the meat in January, and she said they weren’t sure what they were going to be doing, nor what price/pound they’d have to charge yet. All they knew for sure was that they were going to have to increase the price. So we didn’t start making payments at the beginning of the year, like I planned. Which, I suppose, worked out for the best, because we’ve had so many things needing to be replaced or repaired – and we’re still not done with that – that we couldn’t have made monthly payments this year, anyhow. They haven’t updated their website, nor have they announced anything on their social media pages, so I have no idea if they were even still selling beef shares.
I wonder if we can buy a steer from the farmer that rents most of this property? We have enough pasture in the outer yard to sustain 1 or 2 calves. Then butcher in the fall.
Oh, dear Lord. I just looked up the average prices for feeder steers and heifers, per hundredweight, in Canada right now.
*choke*
Never mind that idea! Yeah, we’d save money in the long run, but yikes! No wonder beef prices are so high right now!
Okay, so beef is going to be a rare treat for the next while.
😢😢
Anyhow.
That’s our Costco stock up shop for this month. It won’t last us the month, either.
*sigh*
Oh, that reminds me. Our federal overlords graciously “gave” people on CPP and CPP Disability a 2.7% raise that kicked in for July’s payment, which was a couple of days ago. My husband gets both CPP Disability, plus Disability through his private insurance with SunLife. With private insurance he was “allowed” to make a certain amount above the payments, then everything else gets deducted. The CPP Disability uses up all that “allowance”, which is why I can’t get a job. Anything I earn would be deducted from his SunLife disability payments.
He recently got a letter from SunLife telling him what his payments will be, starting at the end of July, meaning today.
Yup. While the CPP Disability payments went up by a few bucks, his SunLife payments went down by a few bucks.
They cancelled each other out.
🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
Honestly, I thank God that the company my husband worked for had such a good insurance plan. It’s keeping us afloat. I also thank God that we have the arrangement with my brother to live here and take care of the place in exchange for rent. We still have to be creative in making ends meet – like making these trips to the city to buy in bulk and stock up where we can. Especially in years like this, where we have next to nothing to harvest from the garden, never mind preserve for winter. Like my SIL said about their own garden, years ago: if we had to rely on our garden, we’d starve!
Well, it is what it is, and we do what we can with what we have.
When I went out this morning to feed the yard cats, I had an adorable little surprise. Fluffy Colby was with some other cats INSIDE the sun room! I found the other three kittens around the cat shelters and they did run off, but Colby stayed close.
When it was time to bring out the kitten soup bowls, I found him sharing a tray with Havarti. He ran off a bit when I put the kitten soup bowl down, but he was soon back, sharing with with his cousin.
The garage kittens, sadly, still won’t come closer.
Today, my plan was to focus on finally giving the garden, and the food forest additions, a deep watering. Particularly since tomorrow will be hotter again, and I will be doing my Costco shop in the city. Tomorrow is supposed to reach 25C/77F. Today reached a comparatively cool high of 23C/73F. I didn’t need to go anywhere today, so I hoped to get some progress outside.
Well, of course, that changed.
My husband called in refills for his injections, so a trip to the pharmacy was in order. Of course, I combined errands as much as possible, grabbing our big water bottles to refill at the grocery store after getting the meds. Then, since I was there anyhow, I checked out the sales and picked up a few things.
Nectarines always tended to be more expensive, but they still were usually under $2/lb in season.
The next image is of a beef tomahawk steak. This is a cut I almost never see. I know people on carnivore that prize these as having an excellent protein to fat ratio. I just can’t imaging spending $84.95 ($55.09/kg) for about 3 pounds of bone-in meat (1kg=2.2lbs) that would be just one meal. Sure, that might be enough for the entire day on carnivore, but… yikes!
I did pick up a family pack of stew meat, though, which was in the $20 range.
Once back at home, I was soon outside doing the watering. When I got to the high raised bed, though, I also did some harvesting. In this bed, I had left one Purple Prince turnip to go to seed. Which it did.
It’s probably past its best stage for eating, but it wasn’t regrowing a new seed stalk, so I figured it was harvest it, or it would start rotting.
In the next photo, you can find the fuzzy friend I found on one of the leaves. I broke off that section of leaf and set it aside, so as not to disturb the caterpillar. I have no idea what type of caterpillar it is. Hopefully, not something I will regret saving!
In the last image, you can see the turnip with the Uzbek golden carrots I also harvested. I was careful to pull the biggest ones. I’m leaving the smaller ones to give them a change to get bigger, instead of just harvesting the entire bed as I was considering doing. I found a single orange Napoli carrot large enough to harvest. I see hints of orange on some of the other carrots, but for the most part, it’s the Uzbek Golden carrots that have been growing. The Napoli carrot seeds were a couple of years older, and I finished off the last of what was left in the packet. I didn’t expect many of those to germinate.
For all the garden struggles this year, things are still kicking! In both winter sown beds, the radish seed stalks that the deer ate are trying to recover.
They’re blooming again, and sending out more leaves in some of them.
While watering the Spoon tomatoes, I noticed something. When they were being transplanted, I pruned off the bottom leaves before planting them inside the protective collars. One transplant had a larger branch that I pruned off. It was so nice and strong, I decided to just stick it into the ground between two other tomatoes and giving it a chance to grow.
It’s still tiny but, as you can see in the next image above, it’s producing tomatoes!!! The entire plant is maybe 8 inches high, if that. Just one little branch, and it’s producing!
As for those Royal Burgundy beans in front of the Spoon tomatoes – the whole three plants that emerged – one of them has a tiny bean starting to grow! I didn’t get a picture, but one of the yellow Custard beans planted with the tomatoes in the East yard had a whole bunch of tiny bean pods forming. It’s really late in the season, but we might actually have beans to harvest before summer is over!
Even the sugar snap peas are trying to make a come back! Some of them are dying back – they are well past their season – but after the deer munched away at them, some of the plants are pushing out new growth, and blooming! I’ve got one Super Sugar Snap pea plant that I’m leaving (and the deer have left alone) to fully mature so I can save the seeds, but it looks like we might have a few more fresh pods to enjoy, too.
If the deer don’t get to them, first!
It’s encouraging to see some signs of the garden trying to recover and grow. The tiny summer squash are getting a bit bigger, and blooming, though still just male flowers. The winter squash seem to be recovering a bit, too, and some are blooming. The melons are still tiny, but some of them are blooming. The pumpkins are doing quite well, and one of them even has a female flower bud showing!
Whether or not any of this will have time to recover, grow and produce before our season runs out is questionable. With some things, unlikely. Looking at the monthly forecast, it’s possible we’ll have all of September with no frost, though we would probably still need to cover things on colder nights. August, at least, looks like it’ll stay pretty warm. Of course, such long term forecasts are completely unreliable. I’m still going to assume our average Sept. 10 first frost date.
After finished up in the garden and bring the little harvest in, I used some of the carrots, onions from last year – yes, we still have a few! – and an entire head of fresh garlic in a beef and barley dish for my husband and I. The girls hate barley, but my husband and I love it, so they get to make their own supper using some of the fresh fish I picked up for them, yesterday. There will be enough of the beef and barely for my husband to have tomorrow, as well, while I am in the city. My younger daughter is having some PCOS issues right now, so she won’t be able to come with me this time. Which is fine; I don’t actually need the help, but I do like her company. I’ve been doing so much better myself, since I’ve been on the anti-inflammatories, I’ve actually been able to handle these outings better, too. I’m only taking them at the end of the day, instead of twice a day, before with my last meal before bed. I can take them up to 3 times a day, as needed. I just haven’t needed to take that many!
I haven’t taken any pain killers at all since I started on the anti-inflammatories. I do still have pain. Particularly if I lie on my left hip for too long, and I still have issues with my injured left arm. The pain, however is now more specific, and really not all that bad. Nothing worth taking more meds over. I should probably take some painkillers before I leave for the city, though, since I’ll be doing a lot of walking on concrete, and these shopping trips really take a lot out of me.
That orange and white one, Colby, will come SO close when I’m putting the food out, but won’t quite let me touch him! The little tortie is the shiest of the bunch. Still can’t get near the mama, though she will sometimes come to the house for food.
Pinky, the garage kitten mama, always come to the house at feeding time, leaving her kittens in the garage. She does NOT like any of the other cats, and is quite aggressive towards them. If they come to the garage, she will chase them off. I did move their food tray closer to the the door between the middle and the side where the back door is, and have been seeing both kittens. I saw the white and grey one outside the garage, near the back door, this morning. Hopefully, that means they will soon make the trek across the yard and discover the wonders of regular food, water, shelter, toys and other kittens to play with.
The dump opened at 10 today, so I didn’t want to do anything that needed more time. I watered the garden beds last night, so they were okay for the morning. I’ll need to water them again, this evening.
My younger daughter’s desktop – currently the oldest in the household – has been dying, and she’s been looking online for a new one. She settled on one at Best By, but they would not accept any version of our mailing address. Not the physical address, no postal boxes, not even the physical address of the store the post office is in. No shipping company alternative that services our area. Nothing.
Oh, and they won’t ship to one of their own physical stores, either.
Their methods of contacting someone through the website were useless, so my daughter hoped to be able to talk to someone at an actual store about it.
That meant a trip to the city. There was a brick and mortar location near a Walmart we go to during are monthly stock up trips, so that worked out.
After loading up the truck with a couple of weeks of garbage, we headed out. When we got to the entry to the pit, my daughter got out and walked ahead of me. The area in front of the pit hasn’t been cleared since the last time I was there, 2 weeks ago, and it was bad, then! My daughter made sure there was nothing that could puncture our tires so I could drive in, stopping me when she reached and area of shattered glass. I did have room to back up towards the pit, at least. Well. To the pile of garbage and what looked like the remains of a small, busted up shed, in front of the pit.
I don’t understand why no one has gotten the front end loader to push all this into the pit. The custodian can’t do it; she’s a senior with mobility issues, so that’s not part of her job, but arranging it to be done should be part of her job! Unless council, for some reason, is refusing to get someone to do it? I don’t know, but it’s getting really bad in there.
That done, our next stop was the post office. The post office itself is closed today (Saturday), but my MI Gardener order of seeds is in, and I thought it might be in the mail box.
It wasn’t.
In fact, there were three parcel slips in there. I was only expecting one package. I’ll have to come back on Monday, when the post office opens again, and see what’s there!
That’s what I get for not going to the post office, after getting our truck back.
After picking up what mail we were able to, it was off to the city.
The first stop was in a mall with a tiny Best Buy shop in it.
My daughter explained her situation to the guy there, and it was clear she was not the first person he’s talked about this. He knew the answer right away.
Basically, there is no way to get something as large as a desktop computer purchased from their website delivered to a PO box, nor with they deliver to a physical address as far out as we live. Including the store the post office is in.
We’re just too far from the city. He did acknowledge that they lose a lot of sales because of this.
Apparently, it comes down to security and theft. They can’t assure that a large package delivered to a rural area won’t get stolen, so they just don’t do it anymore.
It makes me wonder just how often things had been disappearing for them to go that far!
Their own stores, however, will cannot accept personal orders for pick up, either.
The only alternative, other than buying a computer somewhere else, is to find someone in the city that was can get it mailed to, then pick it up ourselves later.
We have a few options on that, with the best one being my brother and his wife.
By the time we were done talking to the guy, it was about 1, and the only food we’d had were a couple of cheese buns I picked up at a gas station, along with a couple of energy drinks, for the drive in.
The cheese buns were from a bakery in the town north of us, and they were awesome.
So we went to the food court for lunch. As we were eating, I messaged my brother, asking if we could have something shipped to their place. It turns out they have a lock box for deliveries, so they don’t get left on the front step. The problem is, delivery companies and Canada Post mostly ignore the delivery instructions and just leave things at their door, in full view. However, with Canada Post, they might also just leave a card for pick up at the nearest post office. If necessary, my brother also has the option to work from home on the day something is supposed to be delivered.
They were good with it, though, so that was a relief for my daughter!
After lunch (I packed more than half of mine up to finish at home, the portions were so large!), I popped into the Dollarama to look some stuff for the garden – that will be in a separate post – before we finally headed to the Walmart.
I am not bothering posting a picture this time. We had a lot of bulky stuff, so the cart was full, even though we didn’t actually get a lot.
We got more cat food; a couple of 32 packs of canned cat food – we made a very large dent in our supply when we ran out of dry kibble and the inside cats were getting wet cat food only, until I was able to use my brother’s car to pick some kibble up. Then never drive it again, because of the brakes issue. I’d run out of canned cat food for the kitten soup outside, and have been taking from the inside cat supply, too.
We still have feed store kibble for the outside cats, but I got two more 9kg bags of kibble. One for the inside cats, one as a spare.
The cat food alone was about $120.
Then we got toilet paper and paper towels, which we’ve also been going through faster than usual this month.
Then it was three loaves of rye bread, two 18 packs of eggs, a small jar of mayo, three cheeses (gouda, Havarti and Old Cheddar), and a package of hoagie-type sausages. At my husband’s request, we also got some Crystal Light water flavours and a couple of large bags of pretzels. Oh, and we got 6 cans of Monster; two each for me and my daughters, and a jug of orange juice for my daughters. I did remember to get insect repellant, so we got a 2 pack of that. For the drive home, we got a couple of cold drinks.
All of that, plus $5 to the Red Cross, came out to $322.83 after taxes.
*sigh*
That done, we headed home, stopping to put in $40 in gas before leaving the city, as the prices were a bit cheaper there.
Once home and unloaded, I had to feed the outside cats to get all the kittens away from the truck, so we could move it away from the house again! By that time, it was late enough that they were being fed only a little bit early.
It was also supper time, so I have me leftover lunch, then headed outside to make use of my Dollarama purchases. I’ll be doing the watering, once things have cooled down a bit more.
The Re-Farmer 