Good grief, what a day!

April 30, 2024May 1, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today, I would normally have done our second stock up trip to the city. I did the Costco trip last week, so this week would have been our non-Costco run through several stores all along one route.

With all the running around into town I had to do, however, I was able to take advantage of some excellent sales at the local grocery store. The only things left to pick up are more cat food and litter pellets, and we don’t actually need to do that immediately. Those can also be done in the smaller, nearer city, instead of dealing with the big city traffic. I was thinking of leaving the trip until later in the month.

Then yesterday’s flood happened.

We need to replace that old, metal blower fan in the basement with something safer and more efficient.

I had looked at one in Costco last week for $80 and almost bought it, but decided it could wait another month.

After talking about it with my husband, he decided to try buying it online. He found the same fan on Amazon, but it was over $100, so he went to the Costco website. They had two versions – white and not white. The not-white is what I saw in the store. They were otherwise identical, but the white one was cheaper. Still more expensive than what I saw in the store – about $85 for the white one, almost $90 for the not-white one. So my husband was going to order two of them. The only option was for delivery, though, not in store pick up. Slower, but saving us the gas to drive in.

He couldn’t order it. They don’t ship to postal boxes, and there was no alternative to the mail to have it shipped.

Okay, then, I would just head into the city and buy them direct.

Then I got a phone call.

From my mother.

Of course, she acted as those what happened the last I saw her, didn’t happen at all.

She started off asking how I was doing, but in a tone I recognize to mean “can you do something for me”. I also recognized her “I’m dying” voice.

Sure enough, when I asked how she was doing, she said she was terrible. She started to say how she couldn’t sleep for the past few days – then launched into an attack on my brother. She had called him first, but there was no answer, so she was saying that he blocked her number, or he was ignoring her calls, or he cancelled his number… It was well into the conversation before she finally mentioned that she got a “the customer is not available” automated message.

I had to cut her off and really press to get her to tell me what she was feeling, and what she wanted me to do about it. I finally got her to describe some of her symptoms. Basically, the same ones she’s been complaining about for a while now, but she says it’s worse. She can’t sleep more than an hour.

Aside from talking in circles about a dozen barely related things, she also brought up about wanting to move into the nursing home. She really wants to move into the nursing home, now! My brother told her about her needing to get a doctor to say that’s what she needed, and she mentioned that, vaguely, but she still didn’t quite understand the whole process. I started to get the impression that she thought that if she saw the doctor today, and the doctor authorized it, she’d move in right away. I told her, if she does get the doctor’s authorization, that just puts her on a waiting list. After that, it’s basically waiting until someone died and frees up a bed – and then they work their way through the waiting list.

I think she understood that, but didn’t agree with it, or something. I couldn’t quite get the gist of her thoughts.

Given the time she was calling me, I asked if she wanted me to take her to the emergency, reminding her that if we did, we’d likely be there all night, or to take her to the clinic as a walk-in, tomorrow. She really didn’t want to make the decision, but it eventually came around to, she would try to sleep in her recliner chair tonight, then call me in the morning to let me know how she as feeling.

So much for my trip to the city to get the new blowers.

At least the fans and the old blower we have now has made a big difference. By the time I checked before heading to bed, most of the floor was dry. Dry enough that I could plug in the box fan and not be standing in a puddle! I aimed that one partly towards the root cellar’s open door. The floor there has some odd low pockets that held puddles, but it was mostly dry all around them. I was able to move one of the pedestal fans and aim it right at the low spot of the floor under the counter shelves. Those are slightly elevated, so at least there’s a bit of air circulation under them.

This morning, expecting to get a call from my mother, I didn’t even do my morning rounds. I just fed the outside cats, and stayed close to the phone.

When she didn’t call by about 9 or 9:30, I called her.

She did actually sound a bit better, but she was still wanting to go to the clinic. She was getting ready. We talked a bit more about how she felt. She didn’t sleep in the recliner; she couldn’t get it to recline more than a tiny bit, and it was too uncomfortable, so she stacked up pillows to sleep more upright. It helped. The more she talked about how she felt, the more it seemed to me that she was having really bad indigestion. With the stuff going on in her building, that could easily be a stress response, too. Since she was clearly doing better, I suggested trying Pepto before bed and giving it another night. She didn’t have any and wasn’t sure what I was talking about, but she wanted to go to the clinic. She was even packing a bag, in case she was admitted to the hospital.

I told her that I could call the clinic ahead of time, so they’d know to expect her, before we left her place. After I got off the phone, though, I went ahead and called the clinic sooner.

It’s a good thing I did.

My mother’s doctor doesn’t work this clinic on Tuesdays, but the clinic, which is in the hospital building, was down to only one doctor today, and she was all booked up. They couldn’t do walk ins. There wasn’t even a doctor in the ER. The clinic and the hospital were down to this one doctor!!! There would be a doctor available tomorrow, though.

My mother wasn’t going to the clinic today.

When I asked about alternatives, the receptionist mentioned a quick care clinic in the nearer city. I wasn’t sure my mother would be up to that, so I called her before looking it up.

She was surprised that there were no doctors at the hospital and just one in the clinic, and I had to explain to her, there just aren’t enough doctors.

In the end, she decided she was willing to wait until tomorrow, though I will phone the clinic again, before I head to her place.

This meant, however, that I could go to the city, after all.

So I offered to swing by, pick up some Pepto, and bring it to her to try. Just in case. At worst, it won’t do anything at all. When she found out I was going to be going to the city anywhere, and wouldn’t be making a special trip, she agreed.

When I got there, even though she knew I was on the way to somewhere else, and said I would stay long enough to explain the directions to her, she still expected me to sit and stay. I told her, I was going to be doing plenty of sitting in the drive to the city! We went over the instructions, and she even took some right away, as she was planning to rest.

She was actually looking and sounding much better. Even between the two earlier phone calls, she sounded better.

Oh, there was one other thing, though… After all the phone calls I made, I got another one – this time from the person with senior’s support that had visited my mother for an evaluation not long ago. She had promised to follow up with me, after she filed her report.

In a nut shell: there are two question-tests she does in these visits. One is for the “big stuff”. This is where they determine if someone might start doing things like forgetting the stove on, wander off, or start forgetting who the people are around them. There was pretty much no change at all in that area, which I was sort of expecting. The other is for the “little stuff” – and for these, there was a substantial decrease. This is the area where we were noticing issues. So we talked about that for a while, and there are medications for cognitive improvement that can be prescribed (the report was sent to my mother’s doctor as well as the doctor they work with), but my mother is already messing with her pills now, because she’s taking soooo many pills (she isn’t), and would likely refuse to take any new medication. I mentioned about her now wanting to move to the nursing home, and we talked about that for awhile. It can definitely be a help for her. Especially when it comes to making sure she takes her medications.

So the cognitive issues of concern I’ve been noticing have been confirmed, and we are already taking what would have been the next steps, anyhow.

Anyhow.

After dropping by my mother’s, I made the trip to Costco to get the blower fans – with turned out to be cheaper than I remember from last week! They were $75 each.

I am so happy with them!

They’ve got 10′ cords (the old blower fan’s cord is barely a foot long), and can be plugged into each other in a series, if desired – or something else can be plugged into them. They have four positions they can be set at, and three power settings for the fan. They automatically shut off if they start to overheat, and have a reset button.

Both of them are now aimed at the stairs, and maximum settings. One mostly at the bottom steps, which are the wettest, while the other is blowing into the corner under the steps; the first area water was pooling at, and still one of the wettest areas.

The old blower fan is now unplugged. I left it otherwise untouched so the motor can cool down, before I try picking it up to set it aside, into retirement!

What a day it’s been!

I’ve got no idea how things will turn out tomorrow, with my mother. I’m really hoping she’s feeling better because, honestly, I don’t think any doctor’s visit or hospital stay can help her. She has too hard of a time explaining her symptoms, skips things, conflates things and, if I have to be honest, I strongly suspect she’s more interested in the attention than anything else! She’s cried wolf too many times in the last few years. It’s not that I think she’s faking her symptoms, but more that she doesn’t understand them and is making assumptions based on what she wants the problem to be, and wants other people to do something about it. No idea what. Just “something”. We’re all supposed to be able to magically know exactly what her problem is and fix it, and she sometimes gets quite angry when we aren’t also mind readers, knowing exactly what she means to say, even when she doesn’t say it. Very frustrating!

Meanwhile, it’s the time of year when we have the most work to do outside, that we need to get done when the weather is good. My brother, for example, didn’t get her call because he and his wife were outside doing yard work. He did eventually get through to her after she spoke to me, but that didn’t make her any happier. These days, he can’t do anything right by her, and it’s really starting to get to him. *sigh*

Ah, well. It is what it is. We do what we have to do, and that’s all there is to it.

I just wish it wasn’t so frustrating at times!

The Re-Farmer

I’m done.

April 25, 2024April 25, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

Just done.

Things started going down last night, with Little Miss Leaky Butt making a mess on my bed. I changed my bedding and got the first load of laundry started before going to bed.

This morning, I woke to find another mess at the foot of my bed. A small one, but wet enough to soak through to the mattress cover.

So I take the sheets off, but leave the cover for later, since I was out of clean bedding. With the price of king size sheets, I don’t have extra spares. There was just one small damp spot, anyhow.

Then Peanut Butter Cup jumped onto the bed next to me while I was taking my supplements, and aimed her butt at me like a shotgun.

I shooed her away, but she still managed to leave a drip behind!

Meanwhile, my younger daughter had already gone through the dining room on her way to the kitchen, where she discovered Ginger had peed on the dining table.

Unfortunately, the dining table being a flat surface, it had stuff on it. Some of which had to be thrown away.

So for the next while, we were starting more laundry and more clean up. I did the litters, and after I left, my daughter continued doing a deep clean.

I left early so I could pick up our order of lysine for the cats, then continued to town. I picked up a couple of cheap vinyl table cloths, then got a few things at the grocery store. Including tweezers to dig out the sliver I got yesterday, but didn’t discover until this morning, and antihistamines. I don’t normally have allergic reactions to anything, but I am definitely allergic to something outside. Likely tree pollen.

Budget? What’s that?

*sigh*

I made sure to grab a food for lunch to eat in the truck, then called my mother to let her know I would be early. She was just starting her own lunch, so that was going to work out.

When I got there, I found she had already started on her apartment, and even pulled some furniture from the wall. As we were talking, she mentioned that she might stay at a motel for tomorrow night, because my sister suggested it.

Of course, both my brother and I had also suggested it, but my mother does love trying to play us against each other.

Which is how things started going downhill.

First, she started attacking my brother, making all sorts of accusations about how he is after her money (as if she has any worth fighting for!). Then she started defending our vandal, who really is after the millions he believes she has squirreled away. Then she started playing us against each other, while saying how she just wanted us to all get along.

Of course, I defended my brother, while also pointing out how some of the things she was complaining about were the consequences of her own actions. She still doesn’t understand how badly she screwed herself up when she stabbed my brother in the back, months ago.

I’m not going to say more about the things she said, but she started getting increasingly vile.

Then she brought my daughters into it.

My daughters, who were doing a deep clean at home, so I could be at my mother’s to take care of her place, due to the consequences of her own actions.

At which point, I told her, that’s it. I’m done.

Then I left.

So I never got in further than her dining table, just a few feet from her door.

On the way out, I pulled over to email my siblings about the situation, then let my family know I was on my way home, and why.

When I got home, my poor daughter was totally wiped out. She’d had to scrub on her hands and knees in places, and she wasn’t feeling well in the first place.

Oh, and the power was out.

It just came back as I was writing this. It was out for about an hour.

What a mess of a day.

I’m done.

I keep saying I’m done with my mother, too. I don’t need to put up with her abuse. Who am I kidding, though? I’ll still help her out. Not so much for her, but for my brother. After what she did to him, he tried to cut her out, but he is too good of a man. He will always do the right thing, even when it breaks his heart.

I think that, more than anything else, bothers me the most about my mother. She can’t hurt me anymore, but she sure hurts the ones I love.

The Re-Farmer

Got a bit done (video)

April 24, 2024April 24, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had a very rough time getting going this morning, and I’m not sure why. Bad pain day, joints and muscles, and so very sleepy. I got the girls to do my morning routine for me so I could sleep in as much as the cats would allow. Still, I had to do something outside, on this gorgeous day! This afternoon, I picked a smaller job and worked on the garden bed my daughter weeded and prepped for me yesterday. Like the others, it was bowing out where the boards were jointed at a support.

Since posting a lot of photos isn’t an option for me right now, I took the pictures I would otherwise have included here and made them into a short video.

After I was done with the raised bed, I puttered around the yard and enjoyed the day. One thing I decided to do was raise the old market tent higher and secure the corners. Particularly the corners on either side of where it’s broken. At some point during the winter, the canopy supports collapsed, but I couldn’t see why.

I got three legs extended, but the fourth one just would not happen. I even lubricated it and took a hammer to the base plate, but it just would not extend! Meanwhile, even after attaching cords to the other three corners and securing them, the canopy supports kept folding down for some reason.

Which is when I realized the pins at the corners had snapped free of where they were hinged at the corners, and were literally floating free above the legs!

Well, that tent is toast.

We’ll dismantle it and keep the parts and pieces, like the one that had a piece of tree fall on it. We’re still finding uses for those pieces in the garden, so I’m sure we’ll find plenty of uses for these pieces, too. At some point, we’ll pick up another Walmart cheapie. These tents are very handy.

One of the things I want to do is move the home-made folding table that had been sheltered under the tent all winter, closer to the house. It will be used when it’s time to harden off the transplants.

I won’t be able to get much done outside tomorrow, though. I don’t want to start anything then have to leave it when it’s time to go to my mother’s and start bagging things and moving furniture for when the exterminator comes the next day.

Oh! My brother ended up calling me when he had a few minutes at work. He’d actually made it to that funeral my mother had tried to guilt me into going to, even though I really don’t remember these relatives. My brother does, and he hadn’t known about the funeral until we talked about my mother. He went to work super early to get things done, then even booked the time for a meeting he couldn’t miss for when he knew he’d be in the town it was held in – a town north of us! – so he could attend the meeting by phone, from the parking lot. He wasn’t even sure he’d have a cell phone single, but it worked out. He was glad to have been able to go and catch up with a distant cousin. The only down side was, our vandal was there, too. Our vandal has been treating my brother cruelly for many years longer than we’ve been back. My brother is much more tender hearted than I am, so being around our vandal actually made my brother feel ill, even though they had no contact. He wasn’t even sure if our vandal saw my brother among the crowd. Ah, well.

Then we got to talk about my mother, and I found out something disturbing, if not surprising. Not long ago, my mother had proudly told me that she’d skipped all but one of her medications, instead taking the echinacea my sister had brought for her, for her cold. I had quite the talk with her about how potentially dangerous that can be, partly because she’s been on them for so long. I’m also concerned that she isn’t remembering which pill is for what, getting what they are mixed up, and so on. Well, it turns out she’s still doing it, and told my brother about it.

This is on top of her putting her own tenancy at risk by refusing to allow the exterminators in, and accusing them of theft.

We’ve talked to her already about moving away from where she is now, partly because of some of her neighbours messing with her head, partly because our vandal randomly shows up. Mostly, though, she’s going to start needing more help, and there is an assisted living apartment not far from her. However, we’ve also talked to her about going to the nursing home her sister and my father both spent their last years. My mother isn’t at that point, and it would require a doctor’s assessment, first. She’s in favour of living there, when the time comes. The question is, with the things she is doing, is the time coming faster? The added benefit for her living there would be the extra security. If she moves there and our vandal finds out, we can make sure he’s on the list as not being allowed to see her. She would also have access to physiotherapy for those knees of hers, and there’s even a chapel, right in the building. They’d make sure she was taking her medications, having proper meals, and hydrating. If I remember correctly, they even have doctors coming in to see the patients there, instead of the patients having to go to a clinic. I know my father was very happy there. When I made my weekly phone calls to him, he would go on and on about how well they were treating him and taking care of him. But then, my father was someone who told the staff what a great job they were doing, while my mother is the sort that would only complain and find fault.

Still, as she’s messing around with her prescriptions, this is something we need to consider more seriously.

*sigh*

Well, I’ll be seeing her tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully, things will go well though, to be honest, just thinking about it makes me feel overwhelmed. She lives in such a tiny little apartment, but she has so. Much. Stuff. I’m the last person to have any credibility when it comes to that sort of judgement, but I’m not living by myself, with no pets, in an apartment that’s about the size of the room that was her bedroom, here at the farm. The room that is now my bedroom, office and craft room, altogether.

Hhmm… Now that I think about it, this room might actually be a bit bigger than her apartment.

I am not looking forward to tomorrow.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: potting and potting up, and stuff

April 23, 2024April 24, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today I was going to be helping my mother with her grocery shopping, so I took advantage of the trip, leaving a bit early to swing by a hardware store. I didn’t find everything I was looking for, but found other things I needed, instead. Then I swung by another store to pick up something for my mother I knew she was intending to skip this time, before finally going to the grocery store. I was intending to pick up a couple of their prepared hot meals that my mother likes so much, for our lunch. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any this time. They did have pieces of hot rotisserie chicken, though, so I got some and other ingredients for our meal. We were running low on kibble again, so I bought an 11kg bag that I hope will last us.

After taxes, it cost $50, which is totally insane.

My mother was happy with what I got her for lunch, which was nice. As we were eating, I kept waiting for her to bring up about the situation with the exterminators coming in at the end of the week. We went over her shopping list, then discussed whether she was up to going to the store with me, or just giving me the list to do the shopping for her. In the end, she decided to stay at home. The local senior’s centre has social activities in her building on Tuesdays, which she loves, and all she needs to do it walk down the hallway to attend.

I finally brought up that we needed to talk. I could tell by the look on her face, she new exactly what I wanted to talk about. It was a look of rather scornful humour that I see way too often. I explained to her that the public housing department is required to do this, and they really could evict her if she doesn’t go along. She kept smirking and scoffing in response, (all this for just one bug?) before bringing up the things she is convinced an exterminator stole from her. Particularly the old passports. She had four of them together, she says, and now there’s just two. I didn’t even think to ask, why would someone not only go digging through her boxes papers to find them, then take only two of them. Particularly since the exterminator is in and out very quickly. I reminded her that she’s accused people of stealing before, only to find the “stolen” item later. It’s entirely possible she decided to put them someplace “safe” and forgot where, as happens to everyone. I also brought up a few things she does that are far more of a safety and security thing than someone using 70 year old passports that look nothing like modern ones to make fake ID, but that just had her going off on a rant that completely contradicted her concerns about “scam people”.

I managed to get the conversation back to the exterminator visit – and found out hers is not the only apartment that’s going to be treated. I took a moment to check my email and found a response from my sister. It turned out she had also suggested that my mother just get a motel room for Thursday night, but she refused. My sister’s house is not very accessible, and my mother didn’t want to stay at her place, anyhow. So my sister was planning to come out at 7am on Friday morning! With that confirmed with my mother, we worked out that I will come out on Thursday afternoon to bag her fabric items and move furniture away from the walls in most of her apartment. My sister will have to do the stuff in my mother’s bedroom when she gets there, since the bedroom is so tiny, it can’t be done in advance and still have space for her to sleep. Plus, of course, her bedding needs to be bagged.

That finally worked out, I headed to the grocery store with her list. As I was getting her stuff, I noticed they had some sale prices on some things that were even better than in the city, and decided it was worth going back, later. I got my mother’s stuff and was at her place just as the social event was being set up and my mother was already in the lounge, so I took care of putting everything away. She didn’t like that I used the main doors (the other people would see her shopping), though. I used them because they have the automatic door openers that I can activate with my knee, rather than putting the bags down and fighting with keys and very heavy doors. After I put everything away, I started going down the hall to the lobby to say my goodbyes, only to have her meet me and tell me to leave out the other doors! 😄😄

Which was fine by me, but I found it very funny.

I went back to the grocery store for the third time (the cashiers were laughing at seeing me again!), got a few things that were sale. I got about $160 of stuff that would otherwise have cost me about $300 at regular prices in the city. More, if they were regular local prices! A quick stop at the gas station, and I was on my way home. I only had one more side trip, as my husband message me to let me know he had a notification that another package had arrived at the post office. As I was getting it, though, the postmaster had another package she hadn’t make a pick up slip for yet.

I love it when packages come in early!

By the time I got home, though, I was totally drained. While I took a break, my younger daughter headed outside to weed the third raised bed in the west yard for me.

With how things have been going, the past few days, I’d neglected to check on the squash seeds that were still pre-germinating. I remembered to check them this morning, and found little squidlings! So once I was done taking a break, I went to get them planted.

Squidlings! 😄😄

I had three 5″ biodegradable pots left from last year, so I used those for the three biggest seeds, and 4″ pots for the rest.

Because the seed leaves were already pushing themselves out of their shells, I planted them so that the leaf portions were partially emerged from the soil.

The previous batch of seeds I planted are still on the heat mat, and I can see little hills forming where the seedlings are starting to emerge, but these ones are far enough along, they don’t need to be on a heat mat. I did set the pots in water, though. The soil was premoistened, as always, but I want those pots to absorb water, so they don’t dry out the soil.

The gourds, meanwhile, have finally been moved to the mini greenhouse frame in the window.

The next thing that needed to be done was to pot up the early peppers from their tiny tray.

Yes, one pot looks completely empty. There was one cell that I didn’t think had any peppers germinating, but two seedlings started to show up this morning. I wasn’t going to leave just one cell in the tray, so I transplanted the stronger looking one, with as much of the soil around it as I could include. It’ll probably not survive being potted up, but you never know!

Most of the cells had just one seedling in them, but a few had two, and one had three. I thinned them to have just four seedlings (including the one that you can barely see in the vermiculite) per variety. With the hot peppers we already have, plus the Sweet Chocolate peppers, we have way more than we need, and can afford some losses.

At this point, we have pretty much run out of space in the living room for seedlings – and we don’t have anywhere near as many as we started last year! Tomorrow is supposed to be a warm and dry day, so I’m planning on snagging a daughter to help me empty the sun room, clean up the messes the critters left for us over the winter, then set things up for the transplants. The sun room is staying warm enough overnight that I think it’s safe to start moving them out of the living room set up.

Looking at the 10 day forecast, I’m seeing days forecast with highs above 20C/68F! At those temperatures, the sun room will probably be hitting closer to 30C/86F, so if we are we are able to start putting transplants there this week, we will have to make sure to have the ceiling fan going, and the doors wide open during the day.

The bed my daughter weeded today is also bowing out at the sides, to I’m hoping to fix that, tomorrow, then work some sulfur into the soil.

Oh, that reminds me; while at the hardware store, I found they had a sulfur powder available. This can apparently be dusted directly onto the plants, or added to a watering can, rather than being worked into the soil like the granular stuff we got. That might be worth getting later on, but I want to see how the beds do with the granular sulfur worked into the soil, first. Getting a bale of peat would be higher on the priority list right now, though.

For all the running around I was doing today, at least we got a few things accomplished at home, too!

The Re-Farmer

The things, and then more things

April 22, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

I’m going to call this a mostly good, somewhat productive, somewhat frustrating day.

This afternoon, after checking the tracking information again to confirm I had five parcels to pick up at the post office, I headed out once it had reopened for the afternoon. A couple of them were in envelopes, but the others were in boxes. When the fifth one turned out to be the largest of them all, I left it to load the others into the truck, then came back for the last one. Just as I was picking it up, the postmaster quickly added a 6th parcel! There were 5 slips in my mail box, but she found one more! One that was expected to arrive tomorrow, it turns out. Thankfully, it was another bulky envelope, rather than a box.

So this was good. Especially since one of the packages that came in early was a heart monitor my husband got for himself. The kind you strap on while exercising. Our sulfur came in, so I was happy, too.

I was driving home when I heard a Messenger notification on my phone. I pulled into the yard to unload, but remembered to check the message before I went in.

I’m glad I did.

It was from my brother, who was at work. He’d gotten a call from the public housing department about my mother, since he is her Power of Attorney. He needed to talk to me, so I let him know I just got home, then got my daughters to unload and park the truck. I barely got to my office when the phone started ringing.

My poor brother.

The first thing that came up was that they had talked to my mother and asked for his number, since he’s PoA, but she told them she didn’t remember it. They got my brother’s number from me, but this was awhile ago! This is also not the first time my mother has done this. Which is strange, because she calls him herself, and has all our numbers written down in a list on her wall, along with postal addresses, birthdays and anniversaries.

The reason they were calling him, though, was about the bed bug situation. She got their notification that they’re coming in this Friday. My mother has been refusing to let them in for the last few times. This time, she called the number on the letter and talked to the exterminator, saying she didn’t want them coming in, and once again accusing them of theft. The guy would have had to tell the department about this, which leads us to the next issue.

They are coming in on Friday, and she has to have the place prepared – stuff moved away from the walls (difficult, given how tiny her place is), fabric items bagged up, etc. They will be coming in at around 9am, and she has to be gone all day (I believe they know she has respiratory issues, which means she needs to be out for at least 12 hours, instead of the usual 6 hours).

If she doesn’t do this, she will be evicted.

*sigh*

We’ve tried to warn her about this.

My poor brother was already having a stressful time at work, and now he had to deal with this on top of it!

One thing they will also do, though, is provide her with a special mattress cover that will kill off anything on her mattress that might have gotten missed, by denying oxygen.

We talked for a bit and, once he’s home from work, he’ll send a group email to the family. My suggestion was that I could go over on Thursday night to help with bagging things and moving furniture. The best thing would be for my mother to stay at my sister’s on Thursday night, since she has Fridays off, but I forgot that my sister works nights on Thursdays. I’ll be on my own for prepping her apartment. I’d be willing to drive my mother to my sister’s, but she would have to drive my mother back, since Friday will be our first city shopping day. Worse comes to worse, my mother could stay at the motel again, but she would have to check out by noon on Friday, unless she stays for 2 nights, and she would not be willing to do that.

She has no choice, though. She either goes along with this, or gets evicted.

One thing’s for sure. Since I’m the only one that will be able to go over to help her with her stuff on Thursday, I’ll be going straight to the shower, and my clothes to the wash, as soon as I get home!

My mother has zero understanding of just how much her behavior causes problems the rest of us have to fix, and now she’s putting her own housing at risk.

My brother couldn’t talk long, though, since he was already interrupting his work day, but we’ll connect again later today.

By the time I was off the phone, the girls had taken care of things and parked the truck, so I could get stuff together to go back outside and work on the carrot bed. It still had the plastic covered frame on it, so the first thing I did was add metal brackets to the corners before moving it. I most definitely could tell these brackets make a difference!

I was not intending to make another time lapse video of the progress, since I figured it would be pretty boring. I just took still shots of the progress, but I’ve since confirmed a frustration.

To make the photos I included in my previous post smaller, I cropped one, then reduced it to 50% original size. The two garden ones weren’t cropped, but I reduced those to 30%, plus I reduced the colours. Those two ended up being smaller file sizes than the 50% and cropped one. All the photos were uploaded to Google Photos, and inserted into my post from there. On my desktop, WP just tells me my storage is at 98% full, but the app gives decimal points, so when I had the chance, I checked on my phone to see if there was any change.

My storage went from 98.3% full to 98.5% full. Usually, I can upload many more than 3 photos before it goes up by even 0.1%, but for only 3 photos, greatly reduced in file size, to make it to up by 0.2%? Wth, WP?

Clearly, there is zero benefit to storing my images on Google Photo. I’ve tried embedding them, using the share link, etc., but instead of the images, the code shows instead.

So I guess I’ll make a vlog with the still shots, since it turned out to be a bigger job than I expected!

Very early on, though, I got an interruption. One of my daughters came out to let me know my mother had called; they were working in the kitchen and couldn’t get to the phone, but could hear my mother leave a message on the answering machine.

I considered calling her back later, but decided to do it right away.

*sigh*

When I got through to her, she was all chatty, asking how my cold was (I had started to feel one coming on, but that went away a while ago), before going on about how hers is no better (she sounds perfectly healthy), and it was so bad, she thought she was going to die, because of her breathing. At that point, I told her flat out, she says this every time, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t know whether to believe her or not. So she dropped it and instead said she called my sister and asked her to come and take “stuff”. Stuff? What kind of stuff? My mother hemmed and hawed before saying that my sister sews, so… then changed the subject. I guess she was trying to say fabric items? But I’ve helped pack her stuff into bags for previous bed bug spraying, so I don’t know what she’s talking about. With the way she hemmed and hawed before answering, then changing the subject, I suspect she’s trying to hide something from me, and intends to give my sister things that my only my brother, as her PoA, should be seeing.

Then she started asking if I knew about a distant relative that passed away, and I did, because my sister does genealogy stuff and shared the obituary online. My mother wanted me to go to the funeral on the weekend. I don’t know these people at all. I suggested my sister might go, since she’s the one who keeps track of all these relatives, but apparently she already said no, because the funeral is on the Sabbath. ??? I managed to preemptively cut off the possibility of my brother going, since he’s so incredibly busy already, and probably doesn’t even remember them anymore, giving how many decades it’s been since we’ve had any contact. Why my mother suddenly thought it was important for some member of the family to be there, I don’t know. We’ve had other distant relatives pass, and she was never like this before – though she did mention our vandal would probably be there, because apparently he’s friends with them, etc., etc. Okay. So then he should be there. Not me!

I finally got a chance to ask about her grocery status and it turns out that was why she was calling. Her fridge is empty, and she has only 1 bun left. Then she started telling me about the various things she was about to start cooking…

So did she want me to come over tomorrow?

Well, she’s making her list right now, and this and that and….

She would not commit to asking me to come over tomorrow, though when I asked if she wanted me to come over today, she said no. I kept trying to get more information out of her, like if she needed to go to the pharmacy or the bank or anywhere else, and she said now, but with much hesitation. So I finally just said, I’ll come over tomorrow, at the usual time. The usual time? Will I be bringing lunch? I told her that the last time I was at her grocery store, I saw they had the hot meals again, so I could pick up a couple and we’ll have them for lunch. She got downright excited about that!

As we were talking, I kept asking her, is there anything else you need? Anything else you want to tell me? Anything else that’s new?

Nothing came up about the exterminator notification letter or about Friday.

So I let it be. I’ll wait until my brother has had a chance to talk to her.

Which he has tried to do, while I was writing this, but there’s been no answer.

*sigh*

So that was quite the thing.

I’d told her from the start that I’d been working outside, so I finally brought the call to a close so I could get back to it. I think my mother was bored again. I do wish she wouldn’t wait until she’s running out of food, because calling me to help her with groceries! She refuses to do otherwise, though, telling me that if there’s food in the house, that means she has to eat it…

…

I never quite know how to take that. It’s not like she’s a glutton who sits around over eating all day, but she makes it sound like the mere act of eating food is a bad thing.

Anyhow.

I’ll be going there tomorrow, and we’ll see if she’s up to climbing into the truck to do her own shopping this time. With only one place to go, I think she might be up to it.

That done, it was back to working on the garden bed, which also involved pulling in the bowed out sides. I’ll do a vlog about that later. For now, I will say, I am really, really starting to hate those @#$@!% Chinese elms!!! Good grief!

I got it done, though, and even added sulfur to the soil at the end. It took way longer than it should have, but it’s done. Tonight, I’ll see if I can put together a vlog using my still shots, instead of posting any pictures. I suppose I could upload them to Instagram, but it seems not everyone can see them when I embed from Instagram, and I wouldn’t be able to explain what’s going on, anyhow.

I’d like to get more stuff done outside while the weather is good, but now I’m going to have to be at my mother’s at least 2 days this week, then on Friday I’m in the city.

This seems to be a constant pattern, pretty much since we’ve moved here. The more work we need to get on top of around here, the more external responsibilities end up taking priority. It seems to be getting worse, instead of better, to the point that we are falling behind rather than getting ahead. Such is life, but when it comes to things like my mother deliberately disrupting things and hurting people the way she does, it’s getting much harder not to get angry at her – and it takes a LOT to make me truly angry!

Thank God my brother is our “landlord” now. Otherwise, I know we would have moved out by now. Even the short time we were here and she still owned the property, we reached a point where we were seriously considering it. We would have put up with the financial hardship but, if we had, it would have caused more hardship for my brother than my mother, and none of us would have wanted that. He and his wife are the shining light of awesomeness that makes it all worthwhile!

Well, it’s getting late in the day. If I’m going to my mother’s tomorrow, and put a video together, I’d better get to it.

The Re-Farmer

This day feels longer than it should! 😁

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

First, the cuteness.

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We haven’t named this one, but that pattern over his nose makes me think of Nosencrantz, every time I see him!

Nosencratnz is doing well at her new home, btw. 😊

I counted 32 yard cats this morning. Remarkably, while I was petting a bunch of the males as they ate on the cat house roof, Broccoli not only allowed me to pet her, but even pushed her way through the boys to get better pets! Even Caramel let me pet her, in between trying to bite my hand.

Yesterday evening, I got a call from my mother, and arranged for me to come over today to help her with her shopping. This morning, however, I got another call from her. She had a rough night, and wanted me to decide for her, whether she should go to the clinic in her town. At least she wasn’t talking about going to the emergency! That would have been in the nearer city. After talking to her for a bit, it seems that she had issues with heartburn again, but my mother can’t quite understand what that means, and always tries to blame whatever food the TV or magazines tell her is bad. We talked for a while and I reminded her of the list of foods that can make it worse. I remember she had it taped to a cupboard door in her kitchen at some point, but I have no idea if it’s still there. She keeps insisting on eating foods that are known to cause heart burn, though, then blames other foods that don’t, but that she has decided are bad for her. It’s really hard to talk to her about this stuff, because she can’t understand so much, including basic anatomy. We have tried to explain things to her, even showing her diagrams or looking up medical information, but if it doesn’t match what she had decided it is, she doesn’t accept it and promptly forgets it.

One thing that did seem to finally get through was talking about processed meats. She keeps trying to say she needs to eat less meat. If it weren’t for the meat we’ve been bringing over for her, she’d be eating nothing but garlic sausage and deli chicken. At least she eats eggs! I spent some time talking about how, as we get older, it’s important for us to eat high quality protein, and some of the ingredients in processed meats might be triggering her heartburn. She seemed to actually hear me for a change.

Still, what she wanted was for me to decide it I “wanted” to take her to the doctor or not. I told her no, that’s her decision, and we’ll see how she feels when I got there!

So I left I bit earlier and picked up Chinese food for lunch, which she actually did eat. As we were talking on the phone, she’d mentioned going there for onion rings (she still thinks they serve cat meat, because someone said something, and she saw a thing on the news …. ). Onions are among the things she shouldn’t be eating. Deep fried foods are also among the things she shouldn’t be eating!

She hadn’t had breakfast, though, so she was happy for the meal!

There was one unfortunate surprise, though.

When I reached her door, I saw some things on her walker, which she parks next to it. There was a jar wrapped in paper two, a carton of eggs, and two carrots.

Under it was a piece of paper.

I immediately recognized our vandal’s handwriting.

It seems he’d swung by her place, left the stuff, but never knocked or anything like that. Who knows how long it was sitting there.

I brought the stuff inside and ended up reading the letter out to her. It was all the usual stuff about the farm and me and my brother, some invented accusations, and how she’s going against the wishes of my late father and GOD!!! Complete with underlines. Then he threw in a comment about going to the doctor. From past calls he’d made to her, before his number was finally blocked, he told her he was dying, but didn’t say from what. He still seems to think she can give him the farm somehow? Either way, it’s clear he still thinks the property should go to him, but 1) he already has a farm and 2) if he’s dying, what’s he going to do with it, anyhow? It’s not like he’s got any kids to leave it to.

Our theory is, he’d simply sell it. It’s the money he’s really interested in.

The paper towel wrapped jar turned out to be soup in what looked like a small mayonnaise jar – at least it wasn’t a pickled herring jar this time! My mother was so disgusted after hearing what was in the letter, she didn’t want any of it. At least not anything that he cooked (it was full of onions and chunks of sausage, anyhow!).

Instead, we enjoyed our Chinese food and had a good conversation. She was feeling a lot better once she was up and out of bed, and I talked some more about how sleeping more upright can be a help (another thing that’s on the list I made for her, along with food choices). It would be really helpful for her to have a hospital bed, like my husband – it would even be better for her and her knees – but no. She doesn’t want to “bother anyone”. ?? In our province, our home care service department can provide a hospital bed as a “loan” – that way, if anything breaks or whatever, they simply replace it. The company they get these from sends a couple of people over to bring it in, assemble it and test it out. Easy peasy. But no. She even has a chair my brother bought for her that can be reclined almost flat and would be good to use as a sleep chair, but she won’t do that, either.

As we were talking about how being upright and moving around obviously helped out, she then suggested that if she hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning, she probably would have died.

*sigh*

She was clearly feeling better, but not enough to run errands, so we went over her list. She writes her stuff out in a mix of English, Polish or English with Polish spelling. Then she makes little doodles of what they are, beside each item.

I was very confused when I saw “soup” followed by an =, a drawing of a jar, another =, then a drawing of a cup.

It turns out, she meant “soap”.

For dishes.

We had a good laugh over that!

One thing I did take note of was that she included “turkey or chicken”, but not sliced, with a doodle of a deli chicken.

I can’t even wrap my mind around how she spelled “sliced” enough to remember it!

It’s been a while, and a longer list than usual, so I was hitting both the pharmacy and the grocery store to get it all. Which is fine by me.

My only problem is, I think I messed up with my new shoes. Wearing thinner socks has helped, but only with one foot. My other foot could have used a half size bigger. Not that there was any half sizes to choose from. Normally, I’d be confident that the shoe would eventually stretch out a bit, but I’m not sure how far the steel toe extends. I might be hooped. I won’t return them. I’m not going to take back shoes I’ve already worn in the mud. Ah, well. Live and learn! I’ll work it out, but gosh, it got pretty painful by the time I was done! The main thing is, my mother is now well stocked again, and I was even able to get her a variety of fresh meat in single person size packages, instead of the processed meats she usually gets!

As I was heading home, I remembered to stop at a hardware store. I got metal corner supports to put on the corners of our raised bed covers.

In other garden related things, I got a notification today that our T&T Seeds order of potatoes got shipped today, and should arrive tomorrow!

These are the varieties we ordered; 1kg of Purple Caribe and 2kg of German Butterball.

I wasn’t expecting them to be shipped so soon! The space we will be planting them was still mostly covered with snow, this morning. It was warm enough today that it’s almost all gone, but the ground is probably still quite frozen. Of course, they don’t need to be planted right away; they can be stored for a little while, at least, but perishables like this get shipped based on the local growing zone, which means they really should be going into the ground soon!

The potatoes are not the only things that are on the way. My husband ordered a hand crank for my crossbow. I have not been able to use it for a frustrating reason. I’m too short to cock the bow, using the rope cocking aid that came with it. Basically, it’s got a pair of hooks you place on the string, with a matching pair of handles. With the bow secured with a foot, you bend over the stock, pull the sting with your arms, then straighten up. Once upright, the string should be far enough along to lock in place.

I’m too short.

I even tried shortening the cords on the ropes of the cocking aid, but there’s only so far you can do that without compromising the gear. My husband can cock it but, with his back injury, he can only do it a few times before it becomes too painful.

The hard part has been finding a hand crank that will fit the model of crossbow I have. There was one made for it, but it was discontinued shortly after I bought mine! It took a couple of years, but my husband finally found one that is supposed to work on my model – and was affordable!

So that should arrive soon.

If Fed Ex can figure out the address.

It might just end up at the store the post office is in. We shall see!

I look forward to finally being able to practice again!

Anyhow.

That’s a few of the things going on today.

Tomorrow, the septic guy comes in to replace the pill switch!

I’m so excited! 😄😄😄

Besides that, I think the ground is thawed out enough that I can continue working on that bed along the chain link fence. I was able to pry out the last chunk of broken sidewalk block that was under the one end, but that was it. We hit 12C/54F today, so that should have helped a lot. We’ll see how tomorrow is. We’re expected to have a high of 9C/48F, with possible rain.

Rain would be good. I even drove through rain on my way home from my mother’s today!

Maybe not so good if it comes while the septic guy is working on our tank, though!

We shall see.

Lots to do outside, as things keep warming up, and that now includes preparing the potato patch!

The Re-Farmer

The morning so far

March 29, 2024March 29, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

So far, so good, I can say!

Heading out to do my morning rounds, I was happy to see the cat with the messed up eye curled up in the cat bed under the heat lamp again. Unfortunately, the garbage can in there got knocked down again, and he didn’t like me picking it up and cleaning around him much, so he moved away. Not far, though. In fact, I had to push him aside to be able to open the doors to go outside!

Because he moves so slowly, I was able to pet his back a few times. Then, when I was finishing up and going through the sun room to go back inside, I found him like this.

I’m happy to see him cuddling with the tabby. He actually seemed to be shaking a bit, as if cold. Definitely not a well cat.

I did get a good look at his face today, though. I was concerned that both eyes were troublesome, but the other eye is a bright and clear golden colour. The messed up eye’s inner eyelids seem to be swollen, so I could only see part of it.

I counted 30 cats in the yard this morning. While feeding them on the cat house roof, I even got to pet one of the tuxedos! I had the usual cats pushing in for attention, and he seemed quite curious about the whole thing. I got to pet him a few times, and he didn’t seem to be sure what to make of it! I even got to pet Caramel a bit, though she’s one that turns around and starts batting at my hand – claws out! – even as she comes closer instead of running away. A bit like how Rolando Moon will come in for pets, then turn around and try to bite or claw the hand the pets her!

After all the outside stuff was done, I got a loaf of bread for our Easter basket baking. I’m trying a new recipe for overnight, no-knead bread. It’s pretty basic; flour, yeast and water, with optional salt and sugar (I used both salt and sugar). I mixed the dough up late last night, then left it the oven to proof overnight. I prewarmed the oven before putting it in, just enough to make it not-cold. This morning, it was all nice and fluffy. It got scraped down and shaped into a round loaf, which got baked in a parchment paper lined cast iron pan. I also had a pan with water in it, on the lower rack, to add steam to the oven. The recipe said to bake at 425F for 30 minutes, or until golden brown. I ended up adding an extra 15 minutes!

So that is now cooling in the cat free zone.

While tending the seed starts and turning on the lights this morning, I shifted things again. The San Marzano tomato seedlings are now in the mini-greenhouse frame at at the window, where they can get a breeze from the fan to help strengthen their stems.

As of last night, the very first of the short season peppers broke ground, as well as our very first Butterfly Flower! Once more seedlings have emerged, I’ll move them off the heat mat to the other side of the tank, then get the luffa, Crespo squash and drum gourds planted and set on the heat mat.

It also seems like we have finally gotten ahead of the game with our slow drainage problem. When we were finally able to flush properly, we’d get gurgling noises from the tub drain, but now even that has pretty much gone away. The regular use of the bio maintenance stuff is really making a difference. We’ll have to make sure to keep a good supply of the stuff on hand, so we don’t run out and suddenly can’t find it again. One thing we hadn’t done since the tank was cleared was use the Septo Bac we normally do. This stuff comes in powder form, in premeasured envelopes. The contents get flushed down the toilet once a week, to inoculate the tank with bacteria and enzymes to break things down, including hair, food and grease. It does nothing for the pipes, though. I’m not sure that we want to use both at the same time. I’m not sure what having too much bacteria in the septic tank would do to it! I’ll have to look that up.

Meanwhile, we are making sure to turn the septic pump on and leave it running for about 5 minutes, particularly when we are using a lot of water at a time, like doing laundry or taking showers. So far, everything is working out.

My mother called me last night and we talked a bit about the plumbing issues. She was wondering why we hadn’t called a plumber yet, and I had to explain that we have to wait until our taxes are processed and I get my return. Getting the pill switch done, I’m going to assume will be in the $300 range, including the labour. Our plumber has a flat rate for drain cleaning that is almost $300 for the work and 1 hour. If they have to replace parts or if it takes longer, that gets added on. So I’m guessing we’re looking at a minimum of $600 for both jobs. My mother’s response was to start talking about how she never had to worry about stuff like this, because she had “the boys” to take care of everything.

That doesn’t stop her from trying to tell me what to do!

I reminded her of how it took us a while to find a plumber that had the equipment to clear the floor drain in the old basement that was clogged with roots and sand. She thought I was talking about the sump pump reservoir, at first, but that’s a completely isolated system. I reminded her of back when we had a wringer washing machine, and she would drain the tub into the hole in the floor, and then she remembered where I was talking about. Then she asked just how there could be roots in there, so I reminded her of how a rain barrel and been left to overflow for most of a rainy summer, before we moved out here. By the time my brother found the damage it caused, the corner of the new part basement it was near had water seeping through and mold growing. Now we can see sand and roots coming from the weeping tile through the floor drain towards the septic tank.

That got my mother to talking about the problem of trees growing too close to the house, and in particular, the one in front of the kitchen window. Shortly after we moved in here, we talked to my brother about the need to get rid of that tree. My mother objected to getting rid of any trees, most of which she planted. She planted that one to shade the kitchen window, because it got so hot in the summer.

I’m not sure why she didn’t just get blinds or a shade.

Anyhow, it’s taken a few years of explaining how the branches are endangering the (now new) roof, and the roots are lifting the patio blocks, plus cracks are starting to show in the basement wall under the kitchen.

Well, suddenly she’s now telling me I should get rid of that tree. We should just cut it down – I have her permission! 😄 I told her, because this tree is so close to the house and has branches hanging over the roof (despite our attempts to cut them back a few times), this is something we need to hire someone for. Someone with all the equipment to do it safely and not damage the roof. We can see where people have cut this tree back a few times, on the yard side, which means the heaviest branches are on the house side. We can’t just cut the tree down from the base, because it will want to fall towards the house, not away from it.

At this point, my mother started giving me instructions on using ropes to keep it from falling towards the house, and so on. Which, if the tree were not so close to the house, might actually be possible. I tried to explain that to make sure the roof doesn’t get damaged, it needs to be taken down in pieces.

That’s when she started telling me that my brother can take care of it!

I said no. Not even my brother has the equipment needed to safely remove that tree, without damaging the roof! I tried to describe to her what the tree removal company did when we had them come in to clear trees from the power lines and the roof on the north side of the house, but then she lost interest and just told me, I knew what to do! She’d leave it in my hands.

Uhm… yeah… that’s kinda why we’re living here! 😄

It’s funny how she will still try to control what my brother and I do out here, even though she made a big deal about washing her hands of the place when she moved away some 10 years ago. I even remember, after we moved in and the property was still in her name, she told me she didn’t want to ever come back to the farm again and didn’t have to worry about it anymore, because we were here! That didn’t last long. 😄 I am so glad my brother is our “landlord” now! She can get so enraged because we’re doing things differently that she did. Especially when it comes to the gardening. If she isn’t angry, she’s mocking. She mocks me for “wasting” money by buying seeds, for example. She never bought seeds, ever! She always saved her own! Well. Except maybe carrots. Or lettuce. I’m not sure where she thought I would get seeds from when there was nothing we could collect them from, but the fact that we bought seeds apparently means we are stupid with money. BUT, we should also have a huge and perfect garden, just like she did, and never have to buy groceries again…

Talk about selective memory! 😄

Now that we’ve got a few years of gardening behind us, she seems to finally be backing off, but she still gives me a hard time for trying to grow things she didn’t grow, or trying new things. Selective memory again. I know my parents tried new crops, along with the staples, pretty regularly! So why is it bad if I do the same thing? Ultimately, it’s a control issue. She just can’t let go of the place, and the idyllic memories she’s created for herself.

Ah, well. It is what it is. I just wish she treated my brother better!

Well, I sure went off topic, there… 😄

Later today, we’ll go through our baskets and decide which one to use. Oh… that was another thing my mother brought up during her call. Blessing of the baskets. She’s getting hers ready today, too, and basket blessings at her church will be at noon tomorrow. She was wondering when it was in the town closer to us, but I have no idea. I told her, she made it clear we and our basket are not welcome, so we’re just doing it ourselves. Her response was to offer to lend us a “cute” small basket (this after I’ve already told her we have a whole collection of baskets in various sizes). Another thing she can’t let go of. To her, our basket is just too big, and that’s wrong. I’m not sure where she gets this from. When I was a kid, sure, our main basket wasn’t quite as big, but it was still much larger than what she uses now. Plus, we usually had several of them. My late brother and I used to have our very own little baskets (I even found those old baskets while cleaning up the house, and we still have the one that wasn’t broken!). I’ve seen other families bring much larger baskets for blessing, too. Why it even matters to her, I have no idea. Just another thing where she’s decided that how she does things is the only possible correct way to do it, and everyone else is stupid and wrong for doing differently.

I’m glad she wasn’t this bad when I was a kid. It would have destroyed any joy in Easter and our traditions that I had. I even told her flat out, after she threw in a few more unfortunate comments, that she has done more to drive people away from the church than anyone I know. I think it went completely over her head. Ah, well.

We will continue our joyful traditions – including traditions we added ourselves – and remember what it is we are celebrating, instead of worrying about impressing other people, or what they think of us!

And that will include a nice big basket with the loaf of bread baked this morning.

I think the shallow round basket with the flat bottom will fit the round loaf and other contents the best. Then we can go through my collection of hand embroidered cloths and decide which to use as a cover this year. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Costco stock up shop: this is what $960 looks like – sort of! And family dynamics… sigh

February 29, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I finally made it into the city today, for our first stock up shopping trip!

I am so, so tired.

But not because of the shopping. More on that, later!

Today was expected to be a much nicer day than yesterday, except for a quick system blowing through this morning – heavy in the “blowing” part! I was going to meet my SIL for a late lunch, so I didn’t start leaving until shortly before 11am – about an hour later than I originally planned. The wind was so wicked cold, it was painful just to unlock and open the gate! I’d brought along my down filled parka, just in case, and ended up wearing it over my light coat, and was still feeling that wind!

By the time I reached the city, though, things had cleared up quite a bit. I got to the restaurant I was going to meet my SIL at about half an hour early, which turned out to be a good thing. There was a message from my husband waiting for me. My mother had phoned, and wanted me to call her back. I had time then, so I called her from the waiting area in the restaurant.

When I asked her how she was, she launched into how she was feeling soooo terrible, and was wondering if she needed to go to the hospital…

I know my mother well enough by now to recognize the tone. She was wanting attention.

I told her I was calling from the city, and she started back tracking immediately, saying she’d been in bed all morning, and was feeling well enough to get up and make herself some food. After talking about her symptoms, I suggested she call the public health nurse and they could better say if she should call an ambulance or not (I knew they wouldn’t, based on what my mother was telling me). Then she told me that the exterminators were supposed to show up today. I only knew about that already, because my sister told me yesterday! My mother didn’t say a thing about it to me, even after telling me about the last time they came by, and how they checked but didn’t spray. Since she wasn’t feeling well, though, she hadn’t done anything to prepare for them.

Anyhow; she told me she would call the public health nurse after she had something to eat, and I asked her to call us at the farm number and let us know how things went, even if it was just to say something on the answering machine.

Then I got a table, and my SIL came soon after, and we had a fantastic visit. Of course, we talked about my mother’s situation. Unfortunately, she has done this to my brother several times, calling for him to take her to the hospital, only for her to actually turn out to be fine – except for the one time she got food poisoning. She still insisted my brother and his wife drive the 1 1/2 hours out to her place, then drive her another 20 minutes to the emergency room, where she was told she should have called 911! She doesn’t want 911. She wants us to take her to the emergency, and spend the hours with her in the waiting room while she complains about how terrible the staff is because it’s taking so long, or makes nasty comments about the other people in the waiting area, etc.

Since we’ve moved out here, at least I’m handier to be able to take her, but she still manages to get my brother to do it every now and then, too.

My SIL was totally understanding about what was really going on with my mother. They’ve been through this a lot more often then I have!

Anyhow.

Oh, I just have to share something. When we meet up, it’s been almost always at this Smitty’s location, and there’s a waitress there that even recognizes us by now. Which is impressive, considering we’ve been here once very month or three!

Since I have given up sugar and simple carbs for Lent, I ordered a meat lovers breakfast skillet, and said to skip the toast and skip the hashbrowns, because I wasn’t doing sugars or starches. She started asking what I might want to replace them with, and I told her I was basically doing carnivore, so she was… so, no fruit, then… I did say yes to mushrooms, though.

When the food arrived, she actually sat down next to my SIL to face me to tell me about what I got! The kitchen staff “felt sorry” for me, so they added extra bacon and ham and sausage to my dish! Then she realized the mushrooms were forgotten, which I said I was okay with, but when my SIL asked for a side of Hollandaise for hers, she brought me a bowl of mushrooms! She was just fantastic, and it was so sweet of the kitchen staff to add extra meat to my meal!

After we had our most excellent food and a fantastic visit, it was off to Costco to do my shopping.

First stop was to fill the tank. Costco regular gas was 123.9 cents/litre. When I drove through my mother’s town, regular gas was 134.9/L, while all the stations I saw in the city were 133.9. Well worth it to wait to fill the tank at Costco! A half tank cost me about $50

Here is my Costco shop.

When I going through the cash desk, I had all sorts of people asking if I needed help loading my vehicle, and one of the supervisors even came over to ask if I had an Executive memberhip.

Which I do, and I’m glad she asked, because I had a rebate check I’d forgotten about! I also needed to renew our membership. I’d already paid for the cat food, so it was applied to the rest of our purchases.

With cat food, I got eight of the 9kg Kirkland brand kibble; the name brand has gone up in price, but the Kirkland is still $26.99 so far. I also got 2 cases of canned cat food, at $38.99 each. The grand total for the cat food was $329.17, after taxes.

Then there was the rest of the stuff.

The “bottom of the basket” stuff included a huge Kirkland package of paper towels; with cleaning up after the cats, I finally broke down and got a Costco size package, instead of a smaller one at Walmart or something! I also got a big Kirkland brand package of toilet paper, clear “leaf” bags that we use for our recycling and burn barrel garbage, a big bucket of ghee, dish detergent, four 2 packs of flour tortillas, three rotisserie chickens, a double flat of eggs (60 eggs), a flat of Coke Zero, a sack of basmati rice, and a 9pack of mixed pasta.

Along with that, in the order they’re on my reciept, I got two big jars of mayo, a large container of popping corn, a double package of parchment paper, a large jug of olive oil, a 2 pk of lemon juice, a 6 pack of canned chicken, coconut oil, peanut butter, a package each of AA and AAA batteries, more of that amazing parmesan, black garlic and truffle seasoning powder, a panini pack of sliced meats (three types), two 2 pks of Asian Cashew salad mixes, 1L of whipping cream, a package of smoke ham slices, a wheel or brie, a 2 pk of goat cheese, a 4 pack of cream cheese, a block of Old Cheddar, a block of Mozzarella, a 4pk of bacon, a package of pork breakfast sausages, a package of 4 whole mackerel for my daughters (I’m not a fan of fish!) , two 2pks of rye bread, and a package of walnuts.

I also got 5 pounds of butter, but the cashier noticed they were unsalted, and he double checked if that was what I wanted. I hadn’t noticed, but I was going to just take the unsalted. He insisted that they could get me salted butter instead, so I agreed. So 5 pounds of salted butter was rung in, and a guy left to get them for me while I paid for the whole thing. Since I was waiting for the butter anyhow, I got the other guy to part my flat cart aside while I dashed to the bathroom before heading out.

The guy wasn’t back with the butter when I was done. In fact, it was quite a while before he returned – with 5 pounds of unsalted butter! It turned out the reason I didn’t grabbed the unsalted butter without realizing it was because there was no salted butter left in the fridge room! He’d gone looking for salted butter and did find a pallet of some, but it would require a forklift to get it. He was very apologetic and said they could get me the salted butter, but it would take a while.

I just laughed it off and said I’d take the unsalted butter!

Having worked at a grocery store before, I knew to ask if they needed to fix my receipt. The other guy had to double check with a supervisor, and yes, he did have to. He took me over to the supervisor’s cash desk, where he had to charge me for the unsalted butter, then refund me for the salted butter I’d already paid for.

I appreciate computer inventory systems, so I didn’t mind going through this at all.

As for the actual main purchase… The sub total came to $672.52. I then had the Executive Rebate, which took off $169.51, while my membership renewal cost $120. After taxes, my grand total was $629.01

That, together with the cat food, came to a total of $958.18

Ouch.

And I still need to go the rest of our stock up shopping, tomorrow!

Maybe.

I was much appreciating our longer days, as it was still light out when I got home, well past 5pm. After everything was unloaded, assembly line fashion, the girls put away the groceries while I fed the outside cats to get them away from the truck, so I could park it!

Once everything was settled, I called my mother to check up on her.

When I asked how she was feeling, she said much better – and what are you doing tomorrow?

…

I told her I’d planned to go to the city for my second shop, but if she needed groceries, I could help her with that, instead.

It turns out she’s apparently out of everything, and started listing all the things she was out of.

*sigh*

I keep asking my mother to get me to do her shopping before she runs out of stuff, but she says she likes to have things “fresh”, plus if she has food in the house, it’s “temptation” so she eats it.

…

Which is kinda what food is there for, but she has decided that eating is bad, because she’s fat.

*sigh*

Then she asked if I could come over early, because the church was doing Stations of the Cross tomorrow afternoon, which is just fine by me. That way, I can still go to the city and finish my own shopping. If she feels up to it, she wants to go out and go to the bank, as she skipped that last month entirely. That’s one thing I can’t do for her! If she’s not up to it, she’ll just give me her list and I’ll do her shopping for her.

That was the easy part of the conversation.

She was clearly feeling much better, because my goodness, she got herself wound up!

Long story short:

The exterminators showed up today to check/spray for bed bugs, but when he arrived and said she had to leave her apartment, she told him she had a cold (from how she described things, I think she’s got hay fever) and didn’t want to leave. So he never came in. She’d already tried to tell them not to come at all, because they steal things from her (she is convinced the exterminator stole a jar of change and her father’s old passports from deep among her papers – a year ago!). I tried to explain to her that they HAVE to come in. It’s a requirement.

That didn’t go over well.

I ended up having to cut that conversation off and bring it back to my coming over tomorrow. Then I mentioned I needed to do a few things, then have supper, as a wind down to the conversation, to which she told me to have a good evening, and don’t eat too much. Because I need to lose weight. Which she managed to repeat several times, and I called her out on it, before I finally ended the conversation because she was winding herself up again.

For someone who was ready to go to the hospital this morning, she sure bounced back to her usual self quickly… 🫤

*sigh*

That phone call with her was more exhausting than the entire shopping trip, and I find shopping incredibly draining.

Tomorrow could get very interesting. Hopefully, my mother will be on better behaviour, but there’s just no way of knowing, from one day to the next! Or even one minute to the next.

Ah, well. Such is life! Tomorrow will bring what it brings. Until then, I’m not going to worry about it!

The Re-Farmer

Things went rather well!

February 18, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

But first, the cuteness!

An increasingly rare picture of Ginger, in all his handsome glory!

Unfortunately, he’s been spending a lot of time off by himself, usually tucked under a side table, because a couple of cats have been bullying him, and he is not at all assertive. I don’t know why the bullying has increased, but I’m not happy about it. Among other things, it means he rarely comes into my room anymore, to snuggle on the soft warm bed with many of the other cats. The Cat Lady is still looking for someone to adopt him, as a priority. I’d sent her the above picture, and mentioned he’s still being bullied. She said she would try to open up a space for him in the cat shed, though she had another cat show up just today. I haven’t had an answer yet, if the cat just showed up, or if a human just showed up, with the cat! Both are possible. She’s well known in the neighborhood as the cat rescue. I told her we’d be fine hanging on to him until someone is found. Having him move to a temporary home, with strange cats, would just be exchanging one source of stress with another. That, and way too many of our cats have ended up with her, permanently!

Anyhow…

Today turned out to be another gorgeous day. It was supposed to be a few degrees colder than yesterday, but I still saw things melting. My weather app said we were at -12C/10F, but I’m sure our actual temperature was far warmer! I wasn’t home to check the thermometer outside at the warmest part of the day, though, so I can’t be sure.

I made a point of heading out early, hoping to pick up one of those hot dinners at the grocery store she likes so much. Unfortunately, they’ve stopped making them. In fact, their hot food display hasn’t been used for a while now. I asked about it, and it turns out things just weren’t selling well enough to keep it up. They’re hoping to start having them again before Easter. I mentioned that my mother really liked them, but… well, I’m only out there to pick them up for her maybe once a week.

So I ended up getting a Chef’s salad mostly for myself, and a pepperoni, bacon and mushroom “boat” pizza for my mother – it was long and narrow instead of round. I let myself into her apartment and started getting ready to warm half of the pizza up for her, putting the other half in the fridge for her, later.

My mother doesn’t use her oven. She can’t figure it out, and still complains that her old oven was replaced with a new one, when it was perfectly fine. She believes the caretaker at the time kept all the replaced ovens for himself to resell or something, too. This place is run by the province’s public housing department, which means they would have gone into storage until they had one of their surplus sales or auctions. I’ve tried to explain that to her, but she refuses to believe it.

Anyhow.

Since she doesn’t use her oven, she instead uses it as storage for her pots and pans! While emptying the oven, and even checking the drawer underneath, I discovered she has no baking sheet. She’s got plenty of pie pans and loaf pans, and even a small roaster, but no baking sheet. The small roaster had a flat bottom, though, so I ended up flipping it upside down, and using that to hold the pizza as it warmed in the oven. While adding more water to her kettle for tea, I noticed she was down to her last water jug. For some reason, people living where she is have been told not to drink their tap water, but to use a tap in the laundry room, which has softened water for drinking. At least, that’s what she’s told me. Her tap water is the same as everyone else in town, so I know it should be potable. No matter. I found her empties and refilled them for her, so she couldn’t have to use her walker to carry them around and refill them.

So by the time my mother got home from church, the table was set, tea was ready, and her pizza was nice and warm. She was very happy to come home to lunch all ready for her. She does make a point of having food prepared on Saturday, so that on Sunday, all she has to do is reheat things, but this saves her from even doing that. My being there early wasn’t a surprise, though. When I came in through the lobby, someone I saw busily working on a jigsaw puzzle at the table had noticed me going by and recognized me. She was still when my mother got back, and let her know she had company. 😊

She did try to make me have some of her pizza. I told her no, it’s Lent, and didn’t try to explain more. She still put a piece on my plate, saying it’s Sunday, and Sundays aren’t counted in Lent. Which is true, but I think it defeats the purpose of choosing a difficult fast, when you can “cheat” every 7th day! Thankfully, when I put the pizza back on her own plate and said I wasn’t going to eat pizza, she didn’t push.

She did, however, try to make disparaging comments about how I wanted her to get fat. So now, it seems that just eating anything at all is making her fat? I told her, you’ve been fat for as long as I can remember. It’s not about what you’re eating. I didn’t got into it, but considering the sheer amount of physical labour, as well as us eating all that home grown, home raised, home cooked food, with her and my dad still being fat, there’s more to it than diet! At least, not in the current conventional narrative. I think she did appreciate my saying it’s more than about food.

Hmmm. I wonder if some of her neighbours are making comments about her weight, and that’s why she seems to be more obsessed with it? From what I’m hearing, some of her neighbours are real dicks. Some of them are also telling her some very strange things that have turned out to be wildly wrong – like whoever told her she wouldn’t be able to make a phone call to Poland using a cordless phone.

She’s on a waiting list to move to another place in town that provides more assistance, including cooked meals. I really hope they get an opening soon. As much as she likes being so close to the church and the grocery store, she really needs to get away from some of the people there – along with whoever it is that keeps getting bedbugs, but not reporting it!

But I digress!

I was happy to see my mother did enjoy her little pizza, at least. It sure smelled good!

Before I headed out to do her shopping, we went over her list together. She mentioned some sales, and gave me the flier to look at. Then she gave me cash, with very specific instructions as to which bill for for the pharmacy purchase, and which for the grocery store! 😄 I like when she does it this way, as I can then put all the receipts and change back into the envelope for her. Otherwise, I pay for the stuff myself, then she pays me back, and… well… sometimes, she’s generous and overpays me, but more often then not, she gets angry over how expensive things are, and short changes me. It’s not the short changing that’s the problem, but how she acts like it’s somehow my fault that things are expensive.

Speaking of which, she should have had her bills reversed, because the 3 items I got at the pharmacy cost more than her groceries – and that was with all three items being on sale!!

Once at the grocery store, I was a bit confused while looking for what was on her shopping list. There was one item she said was on sale that I never found in the flier, and it was indeed on sale – though not at the price she remembered. Other items that should have been on sale, however, were not.

I should have checked the date on that flier she showed me!

I’ve shopped with her often enough to know what to substitute or change, if necessary, so it wasn’t a problem, though I did ask one of the cashiers as I was unloading onto the belt, if they had a new flier out or something. It turns out their new fliers with that week’s sales come out on Thursdays, so it looks like my mother may have shown me an older flier.

The main thing, though, is that she is now well stocked. In fact, I had a hard time fitting things into her fridge, for a change. Usually, she waits until she’s running out of everything before going shopping again. She doesn’t like to have too much food at home, she tells me, because then she eats it, and she doesn’t want to get fat.

*sigh*

She’s 92 flippin’ years old, and doing better than half the people in her building – and I think she’s the oldest person living there right now! This is not something she should be stressing about!

Anyhow… I’ve been trying to encourage her to ask me to help her get groceries before she runs out of food and, hopefully, this is the start of her actually doing that. We’ll see!

As I was putting her stuff away, I showed her what I changed and why, and she was quite happy. Apparently, I’m a “wise” grocery shopper. 😄 That didn’t stop her from lecturing me, just before I left, telling me not to buy lunches anymore, because of the cost. I told her, it’s a nice treat – plus, I don’t want to be eating up her food. Then she added how, she then has to pay for it. I told her no, she doesn’t!! Unfortunately, when I unpacked the lunch items I got, the receipt fell out and she found it on the table. She had just given me money for gas, so when I said she doesn’t need to pay for the lunch I bring, she just gave me a “yeah, right” kind of look. *sigh*

What she did give me filled my tank, though, so I was quite appreciative of her gift.

Overall, it was a really good visit with her. There were no racist rants. No sudden nasty comments about my daughters, and how I supposedly keep them tied to my apron strings. The topic of our vandal did come up, as he apparently brought a jar of borsch for her again – but she couldn’t remember what day he showed up. She isn’t too happy about it, because he tends to be slovenly, and so she’s unsure that he cooked it while clean. I told her, I really doubt he cooked it! That conversation started to devolve in her going on about how we need to forgive each other and not criticize each other. She made it sound like our vandal is the way he is because I’ve been overly critical of him. Which is really bizarre, since I haven’t spoken to him in years. Even in court last year, when he tried to sue me for the stuff here on the farm, we didn’t speak directly to each other. I was able to redirect that conversation, though, so it wasn’t too bad. I do wish he would stop showing up at her place, though. Another reason I hope an opening comes up in the other place! We can move her and hopefully, he won’t know where she has been moved to, though knowing how she tends to sabotage our efforts to protect her, she would probably phone him herself and tell him. A worry for another time. The one down side about hoping she gets into the other building, though, is knowing the only reason units open up there is either because someone has had to go into long term care, or has died.

All, in all, things went well with my mother, and I’ll take every good day with her with gratitude. There are so few of them! Still, I was glad to get home, and I’m looking forward to not having to drive anywhere for at least a day! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Ah, well.

February 17, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

First, the cuteness!

PBC has settled in so quickly – and very quickly discovered the cats’ window shelf on my craft table! What a cutie. Some human will be very lucky to have her. 🩷

I made it out today to do a bit of shopping. It was absolutely gorgeous today. We even reached -2C/28F! That’s warm enough for snow to be melting off the roof of the house and the garage. When I was in the sun room to feed the yard cats for the evening, I actually found it too warm, so I checked the thermometer on the wall. It was at about 16C/61F!!!

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We were running low on kibble and, for the price difference, it was worth the cost of gas to go to the nearest Walmart. Since I was there anyhow, I looked for other things as well. My first stop was a Canadian Tire, where I found some replacement trays for under my next seed starts. The ones I have in the house are cracked and, with the platform set up in the sun room, I can’t get at the ones stored in there. They also had a variety of grow lights, including a smaller one that would fit over our small aquarium greenhouse perfectly, but I didn’t have the budget for it. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick it up next month. There were some affordable standard bulb sized grow lights available, but we don’t have lamps suitable to use them.

After getting some kibble and a few other items at the Walmart, I decided to also check out a Dollarama nearby. They’re just starting to get their gardening and Easter supplies, so it was filled with unpacked boxes. The few gardening items on the shelf were not the sorts of things I could use. I did, however, spot a toy/scratch pad in the pet section I decided to get two of. It’s one of those round rings with a ball trapped in it for the cats to play with, but the middle has one of those corrugated cardboard scratch pads. The scratching posts we have now are pretty much destroyed, so I figured it was worth a try! One of them went upstairs, since the girls have no cat toys or scratching posts at all up there. Hopefully, it will help reduce some of the damage!

The stores were very busy, and rather loud, so it wasn’t until I got my phone to send a message home, letting them know I’d be on my way, that I saw a message from the Cat Lady. She was asking when I’d be in this city next – our usual half-way meeting spot is next to the Dollarama. I told her I was already there, and was just finishing up. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t right, and we weren’t able to connect. Which is unfortunate, because she’s got a kibble donation for us! Four 7k bags. I don’t expect to be there again until next month, since the next time we’ll be doing any major shopping, it’ll be our stock up shopping in the larger city. However, I told her to let me know when’s good for her. My schedule is flexible, and for that much donated cat food, it’s more than worth the drive to meet her!

But not tomorrow.

While I was out, my mother called. I called her back, and we now have an arrangement for me to go over tomorrow afternoon and do her grocery shopping and run some errands in the afternoon. I might come over earlier and bring a lunch, though by the end of the conversation, I don’t know if it’s worth the hassle. As we were talking, she mentioned that she was about to cook up a package of ground beef I brought for her, from our quarter beef. She started saying how that amount of meat should last her for about a week, because she’s avoiding eating meat, so she doesn’t get fat.

My mother is already fat, and has been for as long as I can remember. It’s never slowed her down. It still doesn’t slow her down, even with her knees wrecked from a car accident!

I told her that, at 92 years, that’s not something she should be worried about. Just eat well, and beef is some of the healthiest meat out there. To which she responded that she could see how “healthy” it is just by looking at me and my daughters. Then she started laughing like she’d made the best joke, ever.

I told her, there was nothing funny about what she’d said (my daughters both have PCOS, which is something she couldn’t begin to understand), and pointed out that she was using our conversation to insult us for no reason. She started to justify by saying, well, we eat lots of meat, so that must be why we’re so fat. I told her no, we don’t eat lots of meat. We eat too much bread and pasta and rice (who can afford to eat lots of meat these days, when you’re not in a position to raise it yourself??). I wasn’t going to bother telling her that the girls eat almost no meat at all, though they do eat seafood when they can. She wouldn’t believe me, anyhow. I called her out, again, on her going out of her way to insult us. She back tracked and started to say how she shouldn’t worry about what we do; we’re all adults now.

This from the person who would justify trying to run every aspect of our lives by saying, “I’m still the mama” so that gives her the right to try to control us. Not hust my own family, but my older brother’s as well. Strangely, she doesn’t do it with my sister, but she sure does try to play us against each other!

Ugh. I need to stop that train of thought. I’m starting to dread going over there now. Honestly, she’s been pretty good lately. Either that, or I’ve gotten better at redirecting her.

But then, I haven’t told her that I’ve given up sugar and simple carbs for Lent again this year. Last year, she mocked me about it, every time we were together, when I kept refusing all the high carb food she kept insisting I eat. She was even offering me sugar for my tea, which she never did any other time. She makes a big deal about staying away from sugar because of her diabetes (she’s not diabetic), so she never takes sugar in her tea, therefore she doesn’t think that anyone else might want it. Which is fine. I have no problem drinking most teas without sugar. It’s when she starts offering the bland cookies, carrot muffins or whatever crackers she has on hand at the time, to go with that tea. Things that, to her, don’t taste very sweet, therefore they don’t have much sugar in them. Except they do. She also doesn’t get that her whole wheat bread is still “sugar” – and she eats a LOT of bread!

Which is fine. It’s only irritating because she insisting things like eating meat makes her feel bad, so it must be bad for her – while continuing to eat foods that contribute to her acid reflux, and when she gets heartburn, she thinks she’s having a heart attack. I’ve printed out a whole list of foods, colour coded and everything, to help her remember which ones can contribute to these pains, and which ones won’t, but she just ignores it, keeps on complaining and blaming whatever other foods that the TV or magazines, or people in her building, told her are “bad”.

*sigh*

It’s really hard to help my mother, when she sabotages our efforts. She does that as much with her health issues as she does with our vandal! I can’t even say this is part of her ageing, though we are definitely seeing increased cognition issues. She’s been like this for as long as my brother can remember, and he’s almost 10 years older than me!

Ah, well. It is what it is. Hopefully, tomorrow, she will be having one of her good days, and things will go smoothly.

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

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

dealing with elderly parents

Good grief, what a day!

I’m done.

Got a bit done (video)

Our 2024 Garden: potting and potting up, and stuff

The things, and then more things

This day feels longer than it should! 😁

The morning so far

Costco stock up shop: this is what $960 looks like – sort of! And family dynamics… sigh

Things went rather well!

Ah, well.

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