dealing with elderly parents

Kitten updates, and birthday with Mom

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today was my mother’s 94th birthday, so I had plans to head over to her place, not long after doing the morning rounds.

With the appearance of kittens in the sun room cat cage, I was expecting to see a fourth kitten by this morning, since I knew that the mama had four active nips.

Nope. Still just three.

With a slightly older kitten on guard, above!

My guess is, the fourth kitten was a loss, and that might have had something to do with why the mama, Frank, suddenly moved her babies into the sun room. Normally, the ferals don’t bring their kittens to the house until they are closer to weaning age. Frank is getting to be more semi-feral than feral, as she does allow some pets every now and then. The good thing is, we now have a chance to socialize her babies, which increased their chances of survival, and our chances of getting them fixed when they’re old enough and big enough.

I headed to my mother’s town a bit early, as I had plans to pick some things up for her. I was hoping to get her a small cake, as I knew she’s complain about things being “too much” (which she did), but there was none to be had, so I got her a cheesecake with two slices each of four flavours. I figured, it was something she could share. Then I picked up her favourite fried chicken and wedges for lunch. When I got there, she was in her living room, so I made a joke about how she wasn’t allowed to come to the table until I was done. Of course, she still had to come to the table – her glasses were on it! I had picked up a candles in the shape of a 9 and a 4 and got everything all set up and the candles lit. She got a good laugh out of it when I started singing happy birthday to her and brought it over. On her 90th birthday, when she was more mobile still, we’d celebrated her birthday at my brothers, and I’d bought her a little tiara to wear. I got it out and had her put it on before I took pictures for the family. She got a laugh over that, too, before blowing out her candles.

We then had lunch together. As she was close to finishing her meal, she did stop to say, she wanted to tell me something, but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. 😂 Yeah. She complained about the food! Or, more accurately, that I was buying her too much food. I told her, she doesn’t have to eat it all at once! Oh, but it’s temptation, she said. 😄 She said she doesn’t want to get fat(ter). I just shake my head. She’s been fat for as long as I can remember, and she just turned 94. In her family, all the women that got fat after having kids lived to grand old ages. All her skinny relatives (the ones that didn’t have kids) died young.

I don’t think she needs to worry about it!

With the cheesecake, I told her she could share it with her neighbours. She stopped to consider the date and told me the next event in the common room would be on Tuesday (three days from today). They usually have a pot of coffee going, and sometimes snacks. She told me, she’d think about whether or not she wanted to share her cake with them! 😄

Since I was there anyhow, I did some light housekeeping and refilled her water bottles. Then I went to the pharmacy to get the things I couldn’t get last time, because they were closed for the holiday. This gave me a chance to finally talk to the pharmacist – I kept forgetting to phone them! – about just how close my mother was to running out of her prescriptions before her new bubble packs were ready. He was able to change the date so that her refills will be done a week earlier. Which means that I’ll be heading over to pick up her bubble packs two weekends from now, and getting them into her lock box. This gives some flexibility, in case I’m not able to get them on the day for some reason. We don’t want them to be delivered anymore, since the delivery person wouldn’t have the code to open the lock box, and we can’t trust my mother to not do something to her meds if they’re not locked away.

While my mother was in a good mood overall, that didn’t stop her from talking smack about my brother and sister. They don’t call her enough. They don’t visit enough. She knows my brother is out of province right now – running a “marathon” with his grandson! Then she started going on about both of them. I was done everything that needed doing by then, and still had to go to town, so it was definitely time to leave.

One of the things on my list to do in town was to go to a different grocery store with our water bottles. This place has a sanitation station, and our bottles were due. I had two to refill, got them both sanitized and started filling them. I had finished filling the second one and was starting to put a new cap on it before putting it in the cart when…

It split open at the base!

There was water spraying all over before I was able to shift it into the sanitation sink to drain. There was a woman using the second fill station and we got the attention of the staff. One guy came over but all he could do was take over holding the jug in place over the sink as it emptied. All 5 gallons!

So… I had to buy a new jug. I don’t like the new jugs that they have now. With the older ones, the handle is part of the jug itself. The new ones have the handle as a separate piece attached. We’ve already got one like it, and it always feels like the handle is about to break off when the jug is full. Ah, well.

That done, I picked up a few things we’d run out of. My husband had requested water flavours, but I couldn’t find any at all, so I ended up going to the other grocery store for those, plus the rest of my list. They happened to have a good sale on stewing beef (good being relative, these days!), so I got a family size pack. I look forward to having a beef stew! We eat beef so rarely these days.

From there, it was a stop at the gas station – the prices had dropped from $1.449 to $1.409 – then home. I pulled up to the house to unload. My daughters were sweethearts and got everything into the house, then distracted the yard cats so I could get the truck out of the yard!

It was feeding time for them, anyhow, so while they put everything away, I took care of the feeding.

It’s getting time to move the catio closer to the house. Even the smokey garage kitten is finally started to sneak closer to the house. Sort of. She’s been skirting the edges of the flower bed at the far end of the yard, along with her brother (I’m still just guessing that she’s a she). They are MUCH more comfortable eating in the catio, though.

What an incredibly unique looking cat!

The kittens in the cat cage were alone at the time, though Frank was no far away. I noticed their eyes were getting stuck shut, so I made sure to give them a wash. This was a first time experience for these kittens, and they did not like it, but they actually handled the whole thing rather well.

Since coming home, the weather geek group I follow on FB sent out some info. Parts of the province are under a frost warning. Our area is not included. Uh, huh. We already had our first frost night, and there were no frost warnings in advance for that one! It’s still rather warn as I’m writing this, but we’re still getting a low of 2C/36F being forecast for tonight. I’m expecting it to get colder than that. I’ll wait a bit longer before covering up the beds again.

Oh, that was something my mother had a hard time with. I showed her garden pictures, including the winter squash bed with its plastic cover. She had the hardest time understanding why one would do that. I had told her about how everything was behind this year and she was all, you know what that means, right? You planted too late.

…

I talked to her about our spring, and how in May we had such hot days, but very cold nights, so the soil didn’t warm up enough. We had drought this year. We had heat waves this year. Then there was the smoke, smoke and more smoke. She just shook her head and told me how she didn’t remember every having problems in the garden.

…

Now, I do remember her making a passing comment a couple of years back, when we had issues in the garden, saying that some years things are good, some years they’re not. This was several years ago. She did remember having bad years in the garden here. This stuck in my memory because she always made a big deal about how she had such a big healthy garden here, and was upset with me for not instantly recreating exactly how her garden used to be, some 20 or 30 years ago. Now, with things not turning out well, in her mind, it’s because I caused it somehow. She’s still wrapping her mind around the idea that I can garden in different ways than she did. Not that I have any choice. It’s physically impossible to do otherwise, at this point. She’s having difficulty accepting that things are not the same as she remembers! She would much rather think that the garden is struggling because I don’t know how to tend thins properly, like she did. 🫤

Ah, well. We do the best we can!

She did manage to throw dig at me, this time about how I didn’t bring her out to the farm for a visit this summer, and now it’s getting cold.

*sigh*

I told her, it’s been a very rough year. We don’t even have a front door right now. Which is absolutely true but, in past visits, we learned very quickly that my mother has zero interest in visiting us. What she wants is to look at everything, from how the yard and garden looks, to rifling through the cabinets in the bathroom while pretending she’s using the toilet (apparently, it didn’t occur to her that we could hear it). She would then follow up with declarations about how useless I was as a human being, and how terrible my family is, for not living the way she wanted us to, and because things aren’t exactly the way she remembers leaving it, when she moved out some 10 years ago. Not how it actually was. How she remembers it was. End result is, none of us want her to come out here again. Her motivations for wanting to come out here – even though, after we moved in, she declared she never wanted to see the farm again – are far from kind, to put it mildly.

My mother has no understanding of just how much her own actions drive people away – and then wonders why no one wants to call her or talk to her! I’ve told her, but she just goes on about why she’s entitled to behave the way she does, and doesn’t see how much she hurts the people who are trying to help her the most. She really and truly doesn’t care, either. *sigh*

Ah, well. We just do the best we can. What else can we do?

At least I can say that she was happy I visited her for her birthday, even if I did it all wrong. 😄😂

The Re-Farmer

Morning sadness, and helping elderly parents can be rough!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Today is Labour Day, a statutory holiday here in Canada. I was still set to do my mother’s grocery shopping, though, as she didn’t want me coming over on a Sunday. I knew the grocery store in her town would be open for short hours, though. With that in mind, I wasn’t planning to head out until 11.

Which meant the usual morning routine, plus I would have time to water the garden in anticipation of one more really hot day, before the temperatures drop significantly. First things first was feeding the outside cats.

I spotted this, some time later…

I had to zoom in from quite a distance so as not to interrupt. Lady Hypotenose does not look pleased!

The first thing I spotted as I headed out with the morning kibble, however, was a kitten laying half out of the new cat cave, clearly passed on. Then I spotted a second one in the box nest in the water bowl shelter!

I messaged my daughter and she came out to help find a place to bury them. Once the food was out, I gathered up the remains while my daughter dug a hole to bury them in. I was quite surprised by the one in the cat cave. This was the kitten with one sticky eye I’ve been washing. Other than a sticky eye, it was looking pretty strong! The second kitten was also one that I saw no signs of illness in. One thing in common, though, is that they both had a bout of diarrhea. Which is the same thing I found with the previous three kittens I’d found and buried.

Once that sad morning job was done, I continued my morning routine, then got the garden watered. I even had time for a late breakfast before heading to my mother’s. By the time I headed out, my brother and SIL were out by his tractor that he needs to fix. It’s outside, so he wanted to put a shelter over it, so he could work on it under at least some protection. Since I didn’t know how long I’d be, and they had to go back home today, I swung by to say hello/goodbye. While I was doing that, they told me they got a voicemail message from my mother saying that she’d been trying to call me, but there was no answer. ?!?! I told them I was on the way to her place to do her grocery shopping, but that our phone had not rung. My brother was planning to visit her briefly on their way home, so I was asked to let her know (and to let her know my brother was in work clothes, not dressed to the nines; my mother has suddenly started to criticize my brother for not dressing “civilized” because he was wearing jeans or whatever).

I was more than happy to wage interference for him.

As I was heading to the truck, I messaged my family to check the land line. When I got to my mother’s, there was a message waiting for me, saying the phone was working fine. When I came inside, I mentioned this to her, only to be told she hadn’t tried to phone me today. It was yesterday! That’s when I realized what had happened (and it was actually the day before yesterday that she’d tried to call me). When I saw the missed call (no message), I called her back and she told me she’d tried calling my brother and sister, too, but no one was home. Somehow, my brother didn’t get my mother’s message on his voice mail until today!

I did let her know that he was at the farm, working on a tractor, and that he planned to visit while on his way home – and yes, I did bring up that he’d be in work clothes, and probably dirty, so don’t give him a hard time! She laughed and said she wouldn’t.

My mother, however, was having a hard time. She said she was not feeling well, and hadn’t bothered to change out of her night gown. I tried asking questions to pin down exactly how she was feeling. She got frustrated and just repeated her usual litany. The problem is, she keeps saying she feels like she’s about to die, but… well… She’s already been to a doctor about these things, time and time again. For some things, like her legs swelling, something could be done – her water pill dosage was doubled, and she now takes it twice a day instead of once a day, for example. There are other things recommended, like keeping her feet elevated, or sleeping on an include. She’s been recommended for a hospital bed so she can do that more easily by me and my siblings, home care and her doctor, and she simply refuses. She won’t even put her feet up in her reclining chair. Eventually, if we ask enough questions, it comes out that she wants the doctor to “fix” her – but not give her more pills – somehow, like magic. And if a doctor isn’t able to do that, well, they’re just hiding something for her, or they just want her to die, or the doctor is [insert racial/sexist slur here] and not a “real” doctor, and she wants us to find her another one. This when we have a major doctor shortage and she’s lucky to have a doctor at all!

Anyhow. It’s frustrating for all of us, including my mother!

She had not felt well enough to make a list, so we worked on that together. I did have to go into her lock box to get a pen. All the pens on her table were gone. I found five in the lock box. Every time home care give her her medications, they have a form to fill out. Instead of using the pen that’s always there for them to use, they’ve been grabbing whatever pen is in reach on the table – then putting it in the lock box when they’re done! 😄

In making her list, she had a few items that would be picked up at the pharmacy. She had also mentioned wanting me to change her bedding, so I knew I’d be there for a while. I was expecting that.

I had some warning as to how things were going to go when my mother started going on about how my brother should really be the one doing this, not me. She “gave” him the farm, after all, and it’s his responsibility. I reminded her that I’m the one in the best position to help her. Oh, I have too much to take care of at home. I had my (disabled) husband and two “babies” to take care of.

Yup. My mother has got it in her head that we’re basically forcing the girls to live with us, and they do nothing. She just sort of invents scenarios on how we live.

As I was deflecting as best I could, she got weird and asked me if my daughters were born boys or girls.

*sigh*

With the way she treats them, my daughter have little interest in spending time with her, plus my older daughter works on her commissions at night, so she hasn’t even seen my older daughter in years. My younger daughter came with me not long ago, as we were on the way to somewhere else and she was coming along as my mobility assistant, really. My younger daughter has pretty severe PCOS, and the symptoms includes having a pretty rad beard. She can even make little braids in it. She gave up trying to shave it years ago, as shaving was damaging her skin, and frankly, it’s just hair. We’re more concerned about the more debilitating PCOS issues.

When I, rather stunned, said that yes, my daughters are female, she asked, why the beard? I told her, it’s a medical condition. My daughter is seeing a doctor and getting referred to specialists about it. My mother just scoffed and made a comment about how she thought I wasn’t telling her everything. I told her, correct. I’m not telling you everything because she just twists everything to be nasty, anyhow, plus my daughter’s health is none of her business.

At which point, my mother twisted what I said to be nasty.

*sigh*

I managed to get away from that conversation and get back to making her shopping list!

As we were talking groceries, she started going on about how bad she feels, but especially after eating. She loves to blame certain foods for anything, because of something she might have heard on TV (sometimes decades ago!) or read in a magazine. She was winding up to the conclusion that she should basically stop eating anything but “liquid”. So… I guess that’s why she waters down her instant oatmeal so much!

After hearing her describe how she was feeling after she ate, it triggered something in my memory about digestive issues with seniors, so I looked it up. Soon I was reading to her about how our digestive systems tend to slow down as we get older, causing various issues. Going through the list, there were only a couple of things that applied to her. One being the heartburn (that she was convinced were heart attacks for many years), which I’ve already gone over with her about, with what foods can trigger it and what can help. She already ignores that. I’ve made printouts for her in large letters that she can ready easily, and she just throws them out. Another was to eat more small meals instead of large ones; again, something that would help her heartburn. She reacted as though this were a revelation, apparently not remembering that we’ve talked about this before. Last of all was physical exercise – something she just doesn’t have the mobility to engage in, at levels that would make a difference.

Then she asked about dry mouth again. She is constantly bringing it up, even though it, too, is something she’d talked about, and she even still has the spray she was given while at the hospital earlier in the year. She used it at one point, thinking it was an inhaler that would help her breathing. It worked so well! When I realized what she was talking about and told her that no, the only inhalers she has are in her lock box. The spray was for dry mouth, she stopped using it.

She has decided her dry mouth is because she had diabetes, and asked me about her blood tests. While at the doctor, she said she couldn’t hear what the doctor had said. I told her what her A1c was (she is not diabetic), and repeated what the doctor had said; she’s sleeping with her mouth open. All she heard was that it was not related to diabetes and she’s not diabetic, so it was another revelation for her.

As you can imagine, it took a while to get her shopping list done!

Today was a Meals on Wheels day. I made sure to leave before that was delivered, so my mother could have her lunch without interruption. I was going to the pharmacy, first, only to find that they were closed for the holiday. I hoped I could find at least some of what she wanted (she was not out completely, thankfully) at the grocery store, but the only thing they did have was ridiculously expensive, so that didn’t happen.

In the end, if was a much smaller than usual shopping list. My mother did make a request for something she could eat with her medications. Some are not supposed to be taken on an empty stomach. She usually eats a few crackers, but I think she’s tired of crackers. She didn’t really know what she wanted, so I told her I would look around the grocery store for something.

I went through the (rather small) store three times.

What kind of snack was there that was “healthy” (as my mother would accept), that didn’t need any sort of preparation, was either shelf stable or could stay in the fridge for a while after opening, and was easy for her to chew, since she refuses to get her dentures fixed after having a broken tooth removed. Some of the things I saw that would have been good, healthy snacks were things I knew she would refuse to eat, because she heard somewhere that they are “unhealthy”. Others were things that she would have a hard time chewing.

I finally settled on some fruit filled breakfast bars. I knew she’s complain because they are “sweet” (as anything fruit filled would be), but it was something to try.

After I was finally done and the truck was loaded, I found a message from my SIL. They were going to be heading out soon, and would I be able to stay longer, while my brother was there? Of course, I said yes. My SIL no longer visits my mother, after my mother started going on about how she wasn’t really family, just my brother’s wife, and blaming her for my brother not being ay my mother’s constant beck and call. So she was going to be dropped off, while my brother was going to pick up some chicken, then meet me at my mother’s.

Once back at my mother’s and everything was put away, and I explained about the pharmacy being closed, my mother started going on about how her “pink” pills were now a different size.

She doesn’t have any pink pills.

My mother was convinced her pills were changed but this time, after asking some questions, she told me that they were different from what she was taking before they started doing bubble packs.

Which has been for at least five years.

I ended up taking one of her bubble packs out so we could look at them together. The “pink” pill she was talking about was actually orange. My mother’s eyesight is failing, so it’s not really a surprise that she sees colours differently, but she’s interpreting that as the pharmacy changing her meds.

As we went over what was in her bubble packs, I went through how the only change has been is the one pill that she’s taking twice a day instead of once a day. Then I talked about how different manufacturers might have slightly different colours or shapes (this was an issue in the past), but the important thing is the dose. The colour or shape of a pill doesn’t matter, as long as the dose is right.

We were in the middle of this when my brother arrived. While he went through to the kitchen with the food he’d brought, she started to tell him that he should look at the pills, because he’s the one that knows all about them.

…

My brother told her that no, I’m the one that knows the most about them now!

At one point, while I was again explaining to my mother about her medications and doses, etc. I realized my brother had started to record the conversation. Which would be a good thing, as it would be a record of how my mother can get.

It’s such a good thing her meds are kept in a lock box now. In the past, when she got it in her head the her meds were changed, she actually took her pills out of the bubbles and “sorted” them. I found the ones she had issue with a while back and had to take them to the pharmacy for disposal. There was at least 50 of these pills that she had stopped taking, because she thought they weren’t the same medication anymore.

Once her bubble packs were put away and my brother was taking the food out, I remembered seeing my mother’s water bottles were needing to be refilled. So I got my brother to pass them to me, then left for the tap her building has in the laundry room for drinking water (I think it’s softened water, but my mother can’t quite remember the explanation she was given to use that water for drinking, not her tap water).

When I came back, my mother was already at my brother.

It got…

Interesting.

In the end, what became clear is that my mother still has zero understanding of the thing she did a while back that stubbed my brother in the back, and the year. In fact, she doesn’t seem to remember what she’d done, and isn’t accepting that she is now facing the consequences of her own actions. She also seems to have forgotten that she has already prepaid for her own funeral, years ago – she basically accused us of planning to have her cremated, like the sons of an old neighbour of ours did when their mother passed. She was also going on about all the things my brother should be doing for her when she passes – things he will not have the legal authority to do, once again thanks to her own actions. She pulled every trick in the book. Guilt tripping. Gaslighting. Accusations. She even started calling herself and orphan, because we were trying to explain to her that she was asking for things that could not be done by my brother. She even brought our sister into it, and had some pretty unpleasant things to say about her!

It took some doing, but we eventually got her calmed down and to some semblance of understanding of how things were, not how she thought they were.

Meanwhile, my mother refused to eat the food my brother bought; not even a single piece of chicken. Because she had her Meals on Wheels (some time ago, by then). I ate only a bit, as did my brother, which meant my mother would have enough prepared food for herself, for at least a couple of days. Which is good, because Meals on Wheels is available only three days a week. She seems to be thinking that, because she gets those meals on those days, she shouldn’t need any other food for the rest of the week… because… she needs to slim down???

*sigh*

Finally, my brother said he had to leave, because he still had a long drive and needed to go to work tomorrow.

My mother immediately started to give him a hard time for leaving “so soon”.

*sigh*

I left at the same time and walked my brother to his car – then gave him a huge hug. I think he really needed it by then! He had come, expecting some sort of behaviour like this from my mother. The good thing is that I was there, which tempers her a bit. When he’s there on his own, she is much, much more difficult and downright abusive. I’ve flat out told her, she teats my brother terribly. Her response is always to justify her treat meant of him because she “gave him everything” by signing the farm over to him. She seems to have completely forgotten that this was done so that her will could not be contested by our vandal, and to take a burden off of her. Since my brother was already taking care of everything for her before then, she doesn’t even understand just how much of a burden it was.

*sigh*

No one has done more for my mother than my brother, and she has no understanding of that. Instead, she seems to actually hate him. It breaks my heart to see how much she is hurting him, and she has no clue. None.

*sigh* again.

After that, I was more than happy to come home and just decompress for a while. I still need to go out and water the garden; I’d gone out earlier, and it was still too hot to stay out for that long. I might not actually need to, though. We’re going from a high of 25C/77F – 28C/82F (depending on which app I checked) today, to a high of only 16C/61F tomorrow. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 15C/59F, but tomorrow’s low is supposed to drop to 7C/45F, and then down to 4C/39F the night after. On the weekend, we’re supposed to get a low down to 3C/37F, and then it’s supposed to warm up again. If the garden is going to have any chance to survive, we’re going to have to cover some things, even if there’s no frost.

This morning, I found and hand pollinated more winter squash. If I can find a way to cover that bed, they might survive the colder nights. It’s so unlikely, but I want to give them every possible chance to produce! As for the tomatoes, we’ll probably just have to pick whatever green tomatoes there are, and let them ripen indoors. Except the Spoon tomatoes. They’re so tiny, and have been nice and productive, we’ll probably just leave them be for the season.

We’ll see how it works out.

For now, I’m going to at least enjoy doing my rounds outside, get some fresh air, and get my brain space back to where it should be, instead of constantly going back to all the things my mother was saying today. Just writing about it here actually helps with that. Now that it’s “documented”, it’s easier to let it go.

I just really, really feel for my brother. He deserves so much better than this.

The Re-Farmer

Planned and unplanned outings, and sooo many kittens!

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

The morning started out as usual, with the feeding of the yard cats and my morning rounds.

Oddly, I seem to be seeing fewer kittens? I think? Meaning the littles that have been showing up in the past couple of weeks. They tend to hide so quickly, I’m not sure, but it just feels like there are fewer of them. The older kittens are still around, but I just can’t get a handle on how many littles there are.

Even though I’d picked up another 9kg back of kibble for the outside cats recently, we were already running out. I was already scheduled to pick up my mother’s bubble packs and do her grocery shopping today, so I decided I would keep going from her place and hit the Walmart. Plus, my husband is having issues with his cracked tooth that won’t be worked on until the middle of next month. So I wanted to pick up foods that were safer for him to eat.

My younger daughter was able to come along with me, which was nice.

My brother, SIL and their older grandson were staying in their trailer this weekend and were going to be heading back to the city soon after I needed to head out, so we made a quick hello and goodbye visit. My great-nephew will be heading home next weekend, before school starts, so I wanted to make sure we got our hugs in!

My daughter and I got to my mother’s town early enough that the pharmacy wasn’t open yet – but the gas station with the best fried chicken and wedges in town had their chicken ready – so we picked up a meal for my mother boxed up separately, then got some for ourselves to eat in the truck. The truck’s seats are more comfortable than the chairs and tables they have in the station. 😄

We still got to the pharmacy just minutes after it opened. My mother’s bubble packs were ready, and most of it was covered this time, so I had very little to pay for it this time. I’m glad I made sure to pick them up today. When I put them in my mother’s lock box, I checked what was there. She had only enough for this evening, plus tomorrow morning. The pharmacy’s records show she should have had enough to last until Wednesday. However, with so many messed up times with her meds, and her abusive behaviour towards the home care aids for not using the partial packs of meds because they were the wrong days, etc., I have taken a few old partial packs back to the pharmacy. They were required to dispose of the meds, which I haven’t mentioned to my mother, or she’d blow a gasket, but it was that or have her constantly harassing the care aids about them. I’ll have to call the pharmacy tomorrow and talk to them about that. They do the bubble packs on the weekends, and that’s cutting it really close for my mother at this point. Better to have her meds prepared earlier. Normally, she would have had them delivered, but that leaves her medications outside the lock box, and she’s already tried hiding a week’s worth of meds away because she doesn’t trust the home care aids.

When we got to my mother’s, it was still not much past noon. Mass was still going on in the church across the street, but I was able to find parking. I wasn’t sure if my mother would have had the energy to make it to church or not, but thought it was unlikely.

I was right. My mother was home and praying the rosary, with her table all set up in preparation for when someone from the church would come by with communion for her. The interruption of us coming when we did messed her up a bit. Which I totally get. When I’m right into something and get interrupted, the mental shift can actually be physically painful.

My brother had given me a new drip pan specifically for my mother’s model of stove, to replace one she has that is completely rusted out for some reason, so I popped that in for her while she got out her shopping list. It was really short this time! We went over it and I asked a few questions, but she said she was well supplied with everything I remembered to ask about.

She was happy to see my daughter, though, and didn’t make any of her usual rude comments, which was nice.

She told us to take our time because she didn’t want to be interrupted when the guy came with communion, but her list was so short, we were back just as church was letting out. My mother was once again thrown by us coming in when we did. I told her that people were just starting to leave church, so we were quick about putting everything away, and making sure her mild carton was opened for her (the local grocery store no longer has 2L milk in plastic jugs, just cartons, and with my mother’s hands, it’s a real struggle to open a carton). My mother was a bit upset about the rush. She had been expecting me to come later, and had been looking forward to being able to “talk for hours and hours”… ??? Especially since my daughter was with me. So she said, no more Sundays for grocery shopping! Which is fine, but I was there today, on a Sunday, so that she could get her medications before running out!

We were in and out quickly, though, and soon on the road to the Walmart. I didn’t take a photo, but it totaled almost $200. Ouch! We got two 9kg bags of kibble, and a package of XXL (30″x30″) puppy pads, plus some on sale TP. Peanut butter, bananas and bread for my husband at times when no one is available to cook for him, and hot dog wieners/hoagies for times when there is someone to cook for him. He can’t chew “real” meat right now, no matter how tender! We got some water flavour packages for him as well. We remembered to grab a couple of containers of popcorn seasoning, and found a charging cable for my daughter’s older phone with a micro-USB port. After that, it was some cheese mini-croissants to snack on for the ride home, and some $1 chocolate bars for each of us as a treat.

I keep thinking I’m forgetting something, but nope. That list is all it took, to cost almost $200.

Once we got home, it was late enough that, while my daughter put away everything else, I refilled the kibble bin and did the evening cat feeding.

Which brings me to the cuteness!

I’ll actually start with a couple of pictures I got, yesterday.

First, there was this cuddle puddle!

Can you spot the Little in there? One of them has figured out how to climb up to the platform and discovered the cat beds up there. Here, it’s being snuggled by Eyelet on the left, and The Grink on the right.

Can you believe The Grink is about 2 years old? He’s barely bigger than Eyelet!

Then there were this two.

That black kitten was absolutely snuzzling its face into the tabby. This cat bed is in the back of the water bowl shelter.

When opening the door into the sun room to do this morning’s feeding, I found a while pile of kittens – large and small! – waiting right under the threshold, making it very difficult to step through! I need to be careful, as Sir Robin in particular REALLY wants to be inside. He managed to sneak into the house while my older daughter and I were bringing the cured garlic in, after covering the eggplant for the night, and my daughter found him in the kitchen!

Most of the kittens scatter as I step through, but one kitten didn’t. It stayed loafed and moved its head around, as if confused.

It turned out its eyes were stuck shut, so it had no idea what was going on around it!

I finished putting the food out but, when I got back to the sun room, I couldn’t see the stuck eyed kitten. I finished my rounds and tried looking again before heading inside. That’s when I spotted a little white kitten bum through the opening of the new cat cave.

It’s a bit difficult to get close, since it’s in a shelf, and I need to step around food trays and the little plant stand that’s there for the cats to use to get to the platform. I was able to reach in and felt a couple of kittens in there, but managed to get the white butted kitten. Once I got it out, I could confirm it was the one with the stuck eyes. It wasn’t happy, but I was able to get it to the bathroom and into the bathtub to chill a bit, while I ran the hot water in the sink while getting something to wipe its eyes with.

The kitten wasn’t happy about being picked up again, but stopped fighting me once I started washing its eyes. Once both eyes were cleared, it just started up at me for a while. This kitten is mostly white with grey “eyebrows”, like Button, Eyelet and Grommet – but where Button and Eyelet have blue eyes, and Grommet has yellowish eyes, this one has really dark eyes!

Once done, I took it back to the sun room and tucked it back into the cat cave. Then I used my phone’s camera to take a picture and see who else was in there.

Wow!

There were AT LEAST six kittens in there! Including another one that could have used an eye wash. It’s amazing I was able to grab the right kitten right from the start!

That little tabby with white in the foreground… he always looks so furious! 😄

As we were getting ready to head out, I went to open the gate first and spotted this adorableness, under the truck.

This is the garage kitten that will sometimes let me pet him and pick him up.

Still no such progress with his sibling (I’m about 98% sure the smokey one is a female).

Yes, we ALWAYS check the truck before starting it and driving.

After we got back from errands and the evening feeding was done, I did my evening rounds. As I was heading in, I spotted Lady Hypotenose on top of the cat cage… and what was that not far from her?

Oh! Hello!

My goodness, these two have such thick, thick black eyeliner!

Then there was the platform kitten, no longer in a cuddle puddle. I just had to get a picture.

It has claimed that bed for its own!

Last of all, I’ve got two pictures of this adorableness. The second one was taken yesterday.

We already have a cat we call Ink, because she looks like she got into a pot of ink with her mouth and paws. This one also looks like it got into some ink.

We’re debating whether to call it Spot or Blot.

What do you think?

I did try to do a head count of the littles this morning, and I think I counted twelve but, as I mentioned earlier, I’m pretty sure some are “missing”. Especially the ones that showed up in the junk pile by the chain link fence, instead of the sun room or cat shelters by the house. It could be that they’ve been moved on by their mothers, or they simply didn’t happen to be out while I was putting the food out.

The next few weeks will be ones to keep an eye on them. This is the stage where, if they are going to get hit with the local variant of herpes, now will be it. That’s the ones with the leaky eyes, and that’s what did in Kale and, I’m sure, Zipper. This year, though, not all the kittens got it. Poirot’s babies have had zero issues, nor have the outer yard kittens that started out coming to the shrine feeding station (they are now willing to go right into the sun room!). The garage kittens have shown no sign if it, either. It looks like some of the littles are resistant.

From what the Cat Lady told me, that would be because of the lysine we’ve been adding to their food for the past year or two. For the cats that are already struggling with the virus, I’m told it’s “lysine for life”, and if they stop getting the lysine, they can get really sick again. BUT, it benefits the next generation, and they can not need it at all. That’s what I seem to be seeing now, with the littles. In fact, at this point, it seems like more of them are resistant than not.

Still, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen over the next few weeks. Which means we might start finding losses.

Well, it is what it is, and there’s not much we can do about it, that we aren’t already doing.

The Re-Farmer

[addendum: I was curious as to what WP’s AI image generator would come up with based on the contents of this post.

This is what I got.

What’s with the two headed kittens????]

Short notice shopping, too funny, and kittens, kittens, kittens!

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I got a call from my mother last night.

Her fridge was empty.

I asked if she wanted me to come over today (Sunday) and she said, I could come over to go to church.

So we arranged that I could come over earlier than usual so that I could help her walk over to church (across the street), then do her grocery shopping afterwards.

When I got there this morning, though, my mother said she wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t feeling well enough. So we went over her shopping list, instead, and I did that, instead. She was feeling bad enough to take her T3s after I left – something she flat out refused to do, the first time she got them prescribed to her. She was feeling a bit better when I got back. It was a larger than usual shopping trip for her, as she wanted to take advantage of some sales she saw in the flier, too. Extra is always good!

After the shopping was done and everything was put away, I was showing my mother pictures of her great grandsons at the large animal rescue when there was a knock at the door. It was someone from church coming over to give my mother communion, since they saw she wasn’t in church today. My mother was surprised, as she usually calls when she knows she can’t make it. Today was a very last minute change, so she never called. He assured her that if they see she isn’t there, they will make sure he comes over. He mentioned he had two more people to visit after, with one being in the hospital, so she’s not the only person he goes to do communion for. Clearly, he visits her first, since she is so close to the church itself.

I left soon after he did.

This morning, when going my rounds, switching trail cam memory cards and checking on the garden, I picked a small handful of bush beans. Small enough to tuck into my pocket with my memory cards.

When I got to my computer, however, there was only one memory card in my pocket.

Before going to my mother’s, I went out again to pick an ice cream bucket full of crab apples. The big tree with the smaller apples has lots of ripe apples right now. Once I realized the memory card was missing, I back tracked everywhere I went, after I’d switched out the memory card that was now missing. In some areas, like around the crab apple tree, the grass is really tall, but a memory card in its case is light enough and flat enough that I would expect it to just “float” on top of the grass. I even got a daughter to look in the kitchen, in case it fell out of my pocket

Nothing.

After back tracking a couple of times, I left my daughters know it was missing and were it was most likely to be, so they could check while I was gone, then headed out.

Nothing.

After I came back and had a quick lunch, I went to look again.

Nothing.

I was going around the crab apple tree again when I thought of one other possible place it could be.

I had those beans I’d put in my pocket. Could I have accidentally put it in the fridge with the beans? I messaged my daughters to check.

Yup.

I’d accidentally refrigerated the memory card!

Well, at least I was able to pick some crab apples to bring inside. 😄😄

Will all that walking around, I got to see lots of kitties.

First, we have the sun room kittens.

After breakfast, these four in the first picture were soon snuggling together in the bed in the cat cage. The black and white in the second picture seems to prefer under the counter shelf, though I’ve sometimes seen it in the cat cage cuddle puddle, too.

Then there were the garage kittens.

The first picture and the video were taken during the morning feeding. Yes, I was able to pet them all! The only reason the smokey kitten didn’t run off was because it was more hungry than scared.

The last photo was taken just after I got back from my mother’s. As I drove into the garage, the mama jumped down from the riding mower and ran off. I thought I saw some ear tips, though, so after I parked, I went to take a look, and found both kittens sitting on the comfy seat, watching me.

They wouldn’t let me come close, though. I had to take stuff out the passenger side of the truck, which meant going past them, and they both ran off.

Ah, well. At least some progress was made at feeding time!

Then there were the “missing” kittens, which have started to creep out from under the cat house. I don’t know why they won’t go inside the cat house; there are three big comfy beds in there!

A couple of faces were familiar. The tuxedo and the mostly black kitten.

The tuxedo was peaking out at me this morning, and then that tabby in the second photo came out to eat at the tray under the water bowl shelter. I did see other faces peaking out, but not long enough to get photos.

The other pictures were taken after I got back from my mother’s.

That mostly black kitten is pretty much confirmed to be Adam’s baby. But how many does she have? Two? Four?

Six???

There was a mostly white kitten that came out, plus a white and grey, and I knew there was a tabby with white under there somewhere.

Eyelet came over and tried to play with the mostly black kitten. The black kitten did not like that at all!

I also got some short video clips of them, as they got braver and started to come out, even with me standing about 10 feet away.

Once I was at my desktop, I kept looking at that mostly white kitten. I hadn’t seen it by the house before.

Yet, it looked familiar.

So I went looking through my photos from a few days ago. It is confirmed.

That log I put up against the collapsing log building by the fire pit has done its job.

The four kittens that were in there have now moved under the cat house.

From what I can see, it looks like there are six littles under the cat house in total, from two litters. There’s five from two litters in the sun room. That makes eleven littles that have shown up recently.

Then there are the older kittens; the two in the garage, Eyelet, Grommet, Havarti and Sir Robin in the sun room, plus Sprout’s four in the outer yard, making ten older kittens.

The only other litter that I know is still out there is Frank’s babies, born just a few days ago. If they survived. I’m seeing Frank around quite a bit and, so far, I’m not sure if she’s nursing or not. She has been letting me pet her more often lately, but she’s still more semi-feral than socialized. I thought I might have seen some active nips, but she just wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to be sure.

I’m really hoping the large animal rescue can take more kittens, but cats are not their focus. Poirot’s babies are thriving there, but they were already fully socialized, and have no problem with lots of different people, including children, handling them. Feral and semi-feral kittens are not something they are set up for. A horse or a llama or a bunch of beat up chickens, sure, but not unsocialized kittens.

Well, we will do what we can to socialize the newbies, so they at least have a chance to get adopted out. Currently, the most socialized ones are the older sunroom kittens. Sir Robin has his wonky eye and sounds like he has respiratory issues, Eyelet is deaf and Grommet has leaky eyes. Only Havarti has no such issues, and he doesn’t like to be picked up and carried, though he loves pets. Sir Robin would be ideal; he can’t get enough attention from humans! But the chances of a rescue with even minor health problems being adopted are pretty much nil.

It is what it is, and we do the best we can for them. It’s going to be harder once the Cat Lady officially shuts down her rescue.

We’ll figure it out.

The Re-Farmer

Mid month stock up: this is what $178 looks like, plus a very long day.

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It may not be mid month on the calendar yet, but it is for our stock up shopping schedule.

It’s been a very long day.

First up, the cuteness. A really bad, cropped critter cam image, but still cute!

That is Lady Hypotenose, in the wee hours of the night, tending her now five kittens! I saw them on the camera earlier, swirling around her like a vortex, except the new baby, who was hunting nip. I look a couple of minute later and there she was with three of her babies (the fourth one ran out of frame), and her newly adopted baby, nursing them all in the middle of the sun room.

What a good mama!

When I went to feed them this morning, they were all over the place, but when I came back after finishing my rounds, they were all gone! Every one of them! I couldn’t see them anywhere in the sun room!

I went out to check the cat house and various other spots, but nothing.

Then I came back to the sun room and found a single kitten, going for the food. I had no idea where it came from.

So I went into the old kitchen and watched through the door with the missing screen, and spotted a kitten squeeze its way out from under the counter shelf.

*phew* What a relief! I was afraid Lady Hypotenose changed her mind about keeping her kittens in the sun room!

After that, I had a bit of time before I needed to head out to my mother’s, to take her for her doctor’s appointment. She really struggled to use the stool and get into the truck but, unfortunately, this was not an appointment that could be done over the phone.

We were able to go through a whole bunch of things during the appointment, from going over the results of her various blood tests (all is fine), talking about her leg swelling with a dosage change and confirming that yes, she has toe fungus, and getting a prescription for that. My mother brought up her frequent complaint about dry mouth, that happens only when she’s sleeping. I’ve been telling her, she’s probably sleeping with her mouth open. I get it, too, sometimes. So when the doctor asked some questions and came to the same conclusion, my mother was right ticked off!

I think the doctor was ticked off, too – or at least shocked – but not at my mother. I brought up the referral for another mental health assessment, since it’s been more than a year, and home care needs it for paneling my mother for a nursing home. The doctor looked up the last penal report and was shocked it wasn’t enough. She wrote a referral for the assessment, but also wrote a letter to the home care coordinator (I’m glad I keep her business card in my phone case, because she needed the contact information!). I brought up that my mother really shouldn’t be living alone, and my mother added that she is having more trouble moving around and has to lean on furniture to get around he apartment.

I think the case coordinator is going to get a rather brusk letter about my mother’s conditions, and that she needs to be in care.

There were a few other things, some of which I had to explain to my mother as I brought her home. Normally, we would have stopped for lunch or something after the appointment, since we were on the road at lunch time, but with the changes in her prescription, I needed to get her bubble packs to the pharmacy.

My mother was so tired, she actually started to fall asleep during the drive!

Once I got her home, I went through the lock box and took some bubble packs out, leaving the new one that just got started today. My mom will stick to the same dose until that pack is done.

I also found a message from my daughter. The pharmacy had already called me on the land line, wanting to talk to me about my mother’s prescriptions! When I got there, I joked with the pharmacist that they are FAST! They were calling before I even got my mother home, yet!

They took the bubble packs to adjust them, but the new prescription for my mother’s toes as another issue. I was warned right away that it was expensive, while she looked up if it was covered by our province’s prescription insurance.

It wasn’t.

My mother had given me cash, and asked me to get some more Voltaren as well, since she’s using it on both her knees and her back now. Between that and the new prescription, it wasn’t enough, so I paid the balance.

When I got back to my mom’s and went over everything with her, and told her I’d covered about $50, she was furious. This little bottle was $50? she said, as she threw it across the table. No, it cost over $120. The $50 or so was what I covered.

Cue much ranting and raving about how it’s just toes, she didn’t need it, she didn’t want it.

She had been quite happy to get the prescription when we left the doctor’s, but I guess she expected it to be free, just like she did with the inhaler when I covered that for her, too.

It took a while to calm her down and give her the instructions on how to use it.

I suspect she will refuse to use it.

After all that, I was more than happy to leave. I still had my own errands to run at Walmart, since I was out, anyhow.

It had been raining off and on all day, and I even got warnings from home that it was pouring buckets. It wasn’t that heavy where I was, though, so the drive to the Walmart wasn’t too bad. I’m just happy to have the rain. We need it so badly!

Once I got to the Walmart, I could finally have my own lunch, too!

I didn’t have a large list, but it was enough to make the drive to Walmart worth it. Especially when it came to the cat food.

This is what $178.63 looks like.

Yeah. Not much there at all.

The most expensive items were the two bags of kibble, plus a case of wet cat food. I also got a box of pet stain/odour remover, to cat supplies alone were in the $100 range.

My husband requested water flavours, but they had only one flavour of his preferred type/brand, so he got three different types. I also grabbed more distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. He still has a good supply, but it’s a lot cheaper at Walmart, so I got extra.

There’s some coffee creamer for the girls, some cleaning vinegar and facial tissues, some powdered chicken bouillon, and some rye bread. They had an excellent price on corn on the cob, so I picked up a bunch.

And that’s it. That was almost $200

Ouch.

By the time I was heading home, it was late enough in the day that I asked my daughter to feed the outside cats. She tells me that all the kittens, except the two garage kittens, came to the house to eat, and she even got to pet some of the new littles! I’m glad because, by the time I was bringing in more cat food through the sun room, they were almost all hiding again.

The system that gave us all that wonderful rain today has passed us by and it seems like the main body of it will go right over where the huge fire across the lake is. Even with the rain, the air was still smoky. We might get a bit more rain tonight, but just barely.

I actually don’t have any appointments or planned errands for the next couple of weeks! I’m amazed. It’s been so long. Of course, there will be the usual unplanned stuff – trips to the dump, any new calls to cover my mother’s med assists for home care, stuff like that – but I’m otherwise actually going to be able to stay home for the next while!

What an amazing thing. I might actually get some progress done on various projects that had to be set aside!

I think I’ll celebrate by going to bed early.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: morning in the garden, and a tiring visit!

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Just a few photos I took while doing my rounds and checking on the garden this morning.

In the first photo of the above slide show, you can see more of the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes are ripening. There are more than what’s visible in the frame of the photo.

The second photo is of some wonderful new leaves coming up on the Opal plum, recovering from what the deer ate.

Last of all is a developing pumpkin. Sir Robin was happy to pose for size reference. 😄

We apparently had rain not long before I went out this morning, so no garden watering needed. In the evening, though, I did water the things that need it the most; the winter and summer squash! I did the melons, to, even though I really don’t see any chance of them growing. Some are blooming, though, so you never know!

Late this morning, I headed out to meet my brother, SIL and their grandkids for a surprise lunch with my mother. That turned out not at all as planned, but it worked out in the end. I brought along several take out containers of the turkey and vegetable soup I made in the slow cooker yesterday (I had it for my breakfast, too) for her freezer. During lunch, I ordered a 3 pc chicken and fries, then packed up most of the fries and the biggest piece of chicken for my mom to have for supper. Between two very active young boys and having to distract my mother when she started to go into one of her odd tirades, we were all very exhausted by the time lunch was done! The boys did really well, considering how many hours they’d spent in a car. My mother wanted them to go to her place, which was not an option. It’s soo small and too full of things rambunctious children could get into and hurt themselves or destroy. They ended up going for a walk with my SIL when we were done, while my brother focused on getting my mother home and I went ahead with their stuff along with what I brought for her. I had time to get the meals I brought into the freezer, and left the restaurant food on the counter to cool, then get to the side door and open it before they had to fight with keys. My mother can get in and out of my brother’s car without a stool, so he could park closer to the side door she prefers to use.

We both had to head out as soon as she was settled in. By the time we got out, my SIL was almost there with the boys. We’d talked about them coming her to the farm afterwards, but that went out the window. They’ll be coming out next weekend and staying overnight in their new abode, so we’ll get to visit with them and the boys soon.

As we were settling her in, my mother made a point of telling us not to make “surprises” like this for her anymore. Which we really can’t do. If we plan this stuff and tell her in advance, she works herself up and behaves even worse – downright cruel, in fact – than if she doesn’t know about it, first.

At least my brother was able to get a visit in, and she got to see her great grandsons. Of course, all she cared was to lecture them about making sure to take them to church. This was the time! When they’re young! Of course, they had just gone to church with her earlier (which was not planned). My SIL had to repeatedly tell her, they don’t live with us. It’s not up to us. They don’t live with us.

I was sitting next to my mother and repeated to her with slightly different working, that they don’t live here.

Well, where do they live, then? she asked.

…

Uhm… with their parents?

That one really threw us. It seems that my mother somehow decided that the boys being with my brother and his wife today meant that they… have moved in with them? Or she forgot that they live with their parents in a different province?

Something to bring up with the home care case coordinator, that’s for sure.

It was really good to see the boys, though. I haven’t seen the younger grandson since he was a babe in arms, still.

We also got some surprises at home today. Kitten surprises! That will get its own post, though.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

What a day!

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… and it ain’t over yet.

First up, today has been the smokiest day we’ve had yet, and it hasn’t let up. It’s absolutely insane out there. It was also really hot and muggy, right from the get-go. We did get rain last night – enough to fill the rain barrel from half full, at least – but you’d never know it other than from the odd puddle in areas heavy with clay.

I did have a tiny little harvest this morning.

Just a handful of bush beans. Barely. The purple pods are from two of the three surviving Royal Burgundy plants. The one that got et by a deer is still recovering.

When I first headed out with the kibble, I was very happy to see that one of the feral kittens – the white and grey one – was INSIDE the sun room! All four of them, plus their mom, were near the house and shelters, and they even started eating from the trays by the house instead of running away to the shrine feeding station. Huge progress there! The garage kittens are still keeping their distance, though.

As I was doing my rounds, I spotted the four ferals again, on my late father’s car.

I had to zoom in from quite a distance. The faces on the white and grey and the calico as they stared at me… too funny! That white and grey has a very interesting shape to its face. I noticed fluffy Colby tends to be on his own, away from his siblings, more often than not.

My rounds done, I brought out my late father’s wheelchair that my daughter had dug out of storage for me. I took the plastic cover off and cleaned off the dust and cobwebs. I was going to lubricate it, too, but couldn’t find my cans anywhere. So I did as much as I could, then loaded it into the truck.

When I got back in, I found the girls were busily cooking as much as they could, before the power was to be shut off at 9am. I left them to it and called my mother to let her know I would be bringing the wheelchair over for her to try out, as we had discussed.

I have to admit, I was really angry at my mother by the end of the call.

She started off with saying, why so soon? I reminded her of our conversation. Then she kept throwing up more excuses, one after the other, about why I shouldn’t be bringing the wheelchair over. She wanted us to talk about it. I explained again, we need to know if she can handle a manual chair or not so we have something to discuss. At point point, she even tried to say that she only wanted it for if she fell down. As in, it would help her get up?? It made no sense.

Long story short: What she had really wanted was for my siblings and I to have some sort of meeting to talk about her wanting a wheelchair and what to get her. However, even that broke down to, she wants my brother to be doing it. She wants him to be at her beck and call at all times. She’s becoming increasingly obsessed with trying to control him and especially to get him away from his wife. Both of whom have never been anything but beyond kind to her.

When it became clear what she was really after, and she was starting to go on about, why doesn’t he call her, I told her flat out that she treats him like s***. Oh, and how does he treat me, she responded.

Like a queen, I told her. Of all of us, he treats her the best. No one treats her better than he does. And she hates him for it.

Yes, I used those exact words.

It blows me away, how her mind has become so twisted when it comes to my brother. We have a theory. As my brother ages, he’s looking more and more like our dad, so she’s treating him like she treated my late father. Which was not good. Our vandal has been abusive towards her for years, and she goes out of her way to defend him, but my brother helped her so much for so many years, making sacrifices, giving so much of himself to her, and she constantly stabs him in the back and makes more demands of him. Nothing he does is ever good enough.

When it comes to how my mother treats me, I don’t care. It took me many years of healing to get to this point. She can’t hurt me anymore. But she can, and does, hurt my brother, and that angers me.

I cut that conversation off and simply told her, I was coming over with the wheelchair for her to try. If she didn’t like it, I could take it back, but we needed to know if she could actually use it.

By the time I was on the road, it was not much past 8:30am. As I was turning onto the main gravel road, I could already see an electric company vehicle about a quarter mile up, parked across from our side of the road. I had to wait for another huge company vehicle to go by before I could continue. In the couple of miles to the highway, I passed a convoy of electric company vehicles, of all shapes and sizes, going the other when. The junction at the highway as a transformer station next to an off ramp, and there was practically an army of more company vehicles and staff milling about!

These folks were loaded for bear!

Later on, I got a message from my daughter. The power went off at 9am, on the nose.

I got to my mother’s shortly after 9. One of her neighbours happened to be by the main doors and was kind enough to open them for me as I brought in the wheelchair, and we chatted along the way. She, too, commented that it’s unlikely my mother has the arm strength to use it.

When I had called my mother, she was eating breakfast, so I was surprised to find she had gone back to bed. She started off saying that the home care aids hadn’t shown up to do her meds yet, but she was scheduled for 9:30, so it was still going to be a while. I had to move things around to make space for the wheelchair while my mother sat on her bed. She said she was really tired and ended up lying down again. I reminded her that this was for her to try out and see. Her apartment is not wheelchair friendly. If she did get a wheelchair, we would have to remove several pieces of furniture, at least, for her to be able to get around. I actually sat in it myself and tried moving around, and it’s incredibly easy to move. However, I’m not almost 94 years old with hardly any arm strength left.

In the end, I was done and heading out with still another 15 minutes before the aid was expected to arrive! My mother was like a completely different person than how she was on the phone.

Since I was in town anyhow, I decided to go to the home care office and see if I could talk to the case coordinator. There were things I wanted to update her on, in regards to the long term care panel. This morning’s phone call being a big one. Thankfully, she was in and able to take the time to see me.

I filled her in on some of the behavioral and cognitive changes I’ve been seeing. She was very surprised when I told her I’d just dropped off a wheelchair. The home care aids hadn’t noticed any changes in my mother’s mobility. They wouldn’t, though. They’re only there for 5 minutes, and my mother is usually sitting at her table, waiting for them.

I was happy to hear that there have been no complains about how my mother treats the home care aids, after a particular racist incident some time ago. I told her, my siblings and I had all had a talk with her about that, and that this sort of behavior would go against her being able to get into a nursing home, like she wants. So far, it seems to have worked!

My mother has an appointment with her doctor next week, so she suggested I ask the doctor for another mental health assessment. It’s been over a year since her last one, and some cognitive delay was noted, but not “enough” to get her into a nursing home. I brought up that I think her vision is also getting worse, but getting her into the special clinic in the city for treatment is just too much for her.

We did both agree that, with all the stuff she’s going going on, my mother is doing really amazing for someone who’s almost 94! Between her messed up knees, her feet, her hands, her vision, etc. the fact that she’s still doing as well as she is is amazing. Which, unfortunately, is the problem. She doing too “well”.

It’s so bizarre that we have someone that actually recognizes she needs to be in long term care, and actually WANTS to be in a nursing home, and they can’t approve her because she hasn’t fallen and broken a hip or something. So frustrating!

That done, I took advantage of being in town to pick up a few things at the grocery store, then another 40 pound bag of kibble at the feed store before heading home. In the last mile before our place, I was seeing guys up one of the power poles, but only one company vehicle on the road, well past our place.

As we were expecting a prescription delivery, plus my brother and SIL coming out with their new “house”, so I had left the gate open when I left for my mother’s. Much to all of our surprise, the power came back on just before 11:30, instead of the scheduled 2pm! That army of workers really got things done fast!

The phone rang almost immediately. It was the delivery driver letting us know we was almost at our place; something we’ve asked him to do, since we usually keep the gate locked. So I headed out to meet him, only to find an electric company truck driving in! They drove up to the main power pole, then reversed their way out the driveway again. As they were passing me, I let them know that there was a delivery about to arrive, just so they’d know a vehicle was on the way. They had just enough time to go to the driveway in the unoccupied property across from us when the delivery driver arrived.

That done and my husband newly supplied with medications, I got my computer going and started checking the trail cam files. For the gate cam, which also takes video, I’ve got a 32 gig card. For the sign cam, which is set to take only still shots, I have a 16 gig card.

I uploaded the sign cam first, then started on the other, only to discover the second card was empty.

It was also a 16 gig card.

I’d put the wrong card into the sign cam!

So, off I went to switch the cards to the right ones, then uploaded the files from the 13 gig card, transferring any new files from the sign cam into the appropriate folder, and started checking them. Which is when I realized that the electric company people had come to the closed gate several times yesterday, with someone climbing over the gate to get in to check the power pole in our yard.

Then I checked the new sign cam files, which were recorded after I made the mistake in switching them out this morning.

What I discovered was a whole bunch of files of our vandal on his ATV, going back and forth.

I went and switched out the gate cam’s card again, to see what was going on.

In that short time, I saw the electric company vehicle going in and out a few times. What I also saw was our vandal stopping on the road to stare down our driveway, several times. Not just while the electric company guys were there and there was something to see, but even while they were gone. There was even a recording time stamped *after* I’d switched out the sign cam cards, so after I’d already done out to meet the prescription delivery.

I was about to update my brother and SIL when I got a message that they had just arrived. So I headed out to talk to them while guy they’d hired to haul it out got unhitched. Then I went and closed the gate! I didn’t lock it, as the electric company guys might still have needed to come in, but it was at least closed. Then I opened and closed it for the driver as he left. I’ll go back later to chain it again.

In the end, my brother end up moving their new abode – which will be a permanent set up – to a different spot. One that can’t be seen from the driveway, and not very visible from the back up driveway, either.

They’re still here and setting up. It’s going to be great to have them as “neighbours”! I just wish we didn’t have to constantly be thinking of what our vandal might end up doing.

Do we really want to go through all the hassle of trying to get another restraining order? It’s such a pain to go through that, and having to drive so far to go the court office. And yet, he is escalating.

Also, for someone who is supposedly dying of cancer that he says we caused, he’s pretty darn mobile and active.

*sigh*

Looks like we need to get more cameras.

On a more ordinary note…

We’re still insanely smokey out there. Our ongoing air quality warning now also includes reduced visibility warnings. It’s also hot and muggy. We’re supposed to get a bit more rain this evening, then again tomorrow morning, but not in any significant amounts. Those thunderstorm and tornado warnings we were getting yesterday didn’t affect us, but apparently there was a possible tornado touch down south of the city. There were also insanely severe thunderstorms that caused lighting strikes as much as 20km away from the heart of the storms themselves!

If we could just get some rain. Just rain. Lots of it. We need it so badly!

With that in mind, I need to decide if I’ll trust the forecast, or go water the garden anyhow, after supper.

I’ll probably be watering anyhow.

The Re-Farmer

Garden firsts, tiny harvest, long morning

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Today, I headed out early to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds, since I needed to go to my mother’s fairly early.

There is actually some progress in the garden today!

The first of the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes is starting to develop a blush. As with so many other things, these tomatoes have stagnated in growth, but there are a few tomatoes developing at least. The rest are still very green.

In the next photo, we have our first open female pumpkin flower. I made sure to hand pollinate it, just to be on the safe side!

Last of all, I had a teeny, tiny harvest. A whole four of the yellow bush beans growing among the corn. It is odd to pick them when there were so few (from two plants, too!), but picking them will encourage more production.

I also picked the most Spoon tomatoes at one time for this year. There was maybe half a cup’s worth. This time, I washed and bagged them up to bring to my mother as a little treat. She’s not supposed to eat acidic foods like tomatoes, but loves them. These are so small and there are so few, they shouldn’t be an issue.

I headed over to my mother’s, getting to her place at around 9am. That’s when the lab opens, but she was scheduled for her morning med assist for 9:30. (She laughed in delight when she saw the teeny tomatoes!) So I helped her out with a few things and rubbed the Volataren on her back for her – something that the home care aid would have done, if I weren’t there. Then as she was getting ready to put on her slippers, I saw her toes needed some serious work! She had hired a foot care person to do her feet a while back and my mother told me she didn’t do a good job. As near as I can figure, though, it wasn’t a good job because her toenails are now long again. ???

I tried to do her feet, but it turned out she doesn’t have toenail clippers. Just fingernail clippers. Some of her toenails were so thick, they couldn’t fit into the clippers. Even scissors just slid off. She had a nail file I tried using, but it was so old, it was practically smooth.

Now on the shopping list for my mother: proper toenail clippers, and one of those callous grinders. There are special toenail grinders, but that would have to be an online purchase. I might order one for ourselves, actually. My husband needs help with his feet at times, too.

[side note: I sent a link to my husband to see what toenail grinder caught is attention and he came over to talk about it. He noticed that these grinders are basically just Dremels for toes – I had noticed that, too, and we both got a laugh over it. He has a variable speed Dremel and was suggesting we just buy the tips and use that. Which wouldn’t work too well for my mother! 😄)

While I was working in my mother’s feet, the home care aid arrived so I paused to let my mother take her meds. Normally, she would be having her breakfast with it, but she was fasting for one of her blood tests. She mentioned that to the aid, who said that she was going for blood tests herself, too.

After checking to make sure my mother’s back was treated, the care aid left. It took a while for my mother to get organized before we could leave. She decided she wanted to go to the bank today, too. Normally, she makes out a list of how many of each denomination she wants, but hadn’t done that, so she was looking all over for an old list. It took a while to redirect her away from that and assure her, she could still get the variety of denominations she wants, even without her list.

Thankfully, my mother was feeling better today than she was yesterday. She has to use a stool to get into the truck, with me lifting her slightly to help out, and she was concerned about whether or not she could do it today. She managed like a champ, though! Once at the lab, there was someone else at the counter, so I got her seated while she looked for her health care card. While waiting our turn, who should show up, but the health care aid we saw this morning! 😁

After my mother was checked in and the forms dropped off, we waited again. It turned out that they were short two people today. At the check in counter was an Asian guy that we’ve seen a few times. My mother prefers the girls, and they weren’t in today, so he was doing it all. At one point, he was at the counter and my mother was staring at him, then started crossing herself, repeatedly. Like she was trying to protect herself from the scary non-white person. *sigh*

The last time I brought her in for her monthly blood test, she asked me to make sure I was in the room with her while her blood was being drawn. It turned out that a while back, when I went to get an EKG done while she was getting her blood drawn, it was this guy that had drawn the blood, and she was convinced he faked it. She was positive that no blood was actually drawn, because she didn’t see any go into the vial.

The when she asked me to be there, it was one of the girls that drew her blood, but this time, it was the guy. As he was drawing her blood, with me sitting nearby, she actually spoke up, asking if he got the vein or not, because there was no blood going into the vial. Meanwhile, from where I was seeing, I was watching the vial fill. She had an extra test done this time, so I saw both of them fill. But my mother said she couldn’t see it.

I am now thinking this is related to her macular degeneration. Parts of her vision is obstructed so, because the guy drawing her blood wasn’t white, that must mean he was faking drawing her blood.

…

He was absolutely sweet with her, though, but sadly, that means nothing to my mother.

*sigh*

After her samples were drawn, we headed out and stopped at the bank. She hasn’t gone in ages and my brother has been getting her monthly cash for her, because it’s so difficult for her now. With his work hours, he’s only been able to take out smaller amounts through an ATM, and not all in the denominations she wants. This time, since she didn’t have her list, she asked me to go to the counter with her and make her requests as she had instructed me in the truck. This is a first. I usually go along to be available to help her with things, physically, but this time she actually wanted me to talk to the teller for her. The teller, of course, confirmed with my mother after I passed on the instructions, that it was what she wanted. My mother asking me to do something like this, especially involving money, is a really big shift.

The banking done, my mother was really hungry from her fasting, so she suggested we go somewhere to eat. It was early enough we still had to wait for the restaurant to open at 11. While there, someone else showed up to wait for the doors to open. My mother, being my mother, had her usual complaint every time we go to this place. The sidewalk to the door has broken edges on the concrete. She constantly rants about how they need to fix it, it looks bad, it makes the entire town look bad, it’s bad for business, etc. In reality, though, she just doesn’t like the look of it and demands it gets fixed for her. It really isn’t that bad. She started going on about it to the guy that was there, too, and we were both commenting that this would be very expensive to fix, and I pointed out that special permits would be needed. Plus, part of the area wouldn’t even belong to the restaurant, but to the town, so it would be the town’s responsibility to fix about half of it. All of which she angrily dismissed.

Then the poor guy came to unlock the door.

He held the doors open for my mother and her walker. My mother, meanwhile, didn’t miss a beat and went from complaining to us about the state of the sidewalk, to yelling about it at the poor guy. He did give an apology for it and said that it would be fixed when they could afford it, but my mother just kept being really rude and angry at him. I apologized, of course, but he seemed to take it in stride.

We had ourselves an excellent lunch, though, with my mother ordering a medium pizza for herself, so that she could take half of it home for her supper later on. Even with ordering, though, my mother was so impatient. She was hungry, which probably explained some of the behaviour, but she seems to think that if she tells the waitress how hungry she is, they will somehow magically produce her order instantly. Almost immediately after placing her order, she was complaining about how long it was taking! Once she got her food, though, she was very happy with it.

My mother insisted on paying for the meal, but she doesn’t believe in tips, so when she gave me just barely enough cash to cover the bill, I snuck a tip to the waitress. The last time my mother saw me leave a tip, she actually yelled at me on the way home over it.

That was our last stop, though, and my mother was more than happy to get home. Getting in and out of the truck is so difficult for her, but she manages it! Still, she had to stop and rest on her walker several times, just to walk the short distance to her apartment.

One of the things she was telling me to talk about with my brother (as her PoA) is about getting her a wheelchair. I tried asking her some questions about it, but she just said she needs a really comfortable wheelchair, and she can pay for it.

Now, we still have my late father’s folding wheelchair. That’s not what she’s asking for, though. She wants something “comfortable” (which is so subjective!). The problem is, I don’t think she has the arm strength to wheel herself around in a manual wheelchair. I tried to explain that to her, but it took several times for her to understand what I was getting at. Once she did, she tried to say that if she could stand at the counter and cook her own food, she could operate a wheelchair. I told her that there is a big difference between doing stuff at a counter or stove, and trying to move around her own weight. At which point she asked, what’s the alternative.

*sigh*

Several times now, my brother has tried to provide her with motorized mobility devices. Including a motorized chair that took up less space than her walker does. She refused to use it. When I brought it up, she said she didn’t like how jerky it was and she was afraid she would run into things. I told her, it was just a matter of getting used to it and learning how to use it.

In the end, I told her I would bring it up with my siblings but, in the mean time, I would bring my father’s wheelchair over. She could try it out and see just how well she can handle a manual chair. If she can, then we can look into getting her a “comfortable” wheelchair. Otherwise, we’d have to look into a power chair.

Our province does actually have a program that provides manual and power chairs on loan. On looking into the details, though, my mother doesn’t qualify, as she is in the process of being paneled for a nursing home.

The other problem I didn’t even bother bringing up is, my mother’s apartment is not wheelchair friendly. We would have to get rid of some of her furniture for her to be able to get around.

Well, we’ll be seeing my mother’s doctor next week. Perhaps there is something the doctor can do to expedite getting my mother into some sort of supportive living or long term care. As far as how the home care system paneling goes, they’re basically waiting for my mother to have a fall or something and end up in the hospital before she qualifies for anything. Which, of course, we’re doing everything we can to avoid!

In the end, I spent about three hours helping my mother get around and do the things she wanted. She was pretty exhausted by the time I got her home, and so was I! Enough that, once I got home, I ended up crashing for a couple of hours.

I still feel like I could sleep for a week.

Meanwhile, my brother and his wife came out, late this afternoon. They were returning their trailer from the camp ground up north and parking it. It was several hours of driving for them to get here. My brother was then running around like crazy, as he usually does! My SIL was able to catch me up on things while I gave her a tour of what I’ve been doing around with the garden. She really liked the new section of wattle weaving, and I told her about the issues I was having with the project, and my plans to get some basket willow, and where I would be planting them. Definitely with more planning than with the other willows we’ve got on the property! Some of them, like the ones near where the ejector is, should be cut down. They were planted way too close to the ejector and, even at its new location, their roots can destroy the system. I’m really surprised that they were planted there in the first place and, from the looks of some of them, someone already tried to cut them down at some point, and they just grew right back!

My brother and his wife have been talking about ways to help out with big jobs like that. We simply don’t have the tools and equipment to do a lot of it.

There isn’t a lot left of the season for this year, but next year I suspect there are going to be a LOT of changes and progress being made here, now that they no longer have their acreage to take care of, and can come out here more often. They’re even going to bring out a more permanent structure they were able to get a very good deal on. Something more like what in the UK is, I think, called a caravan. I can’t remember the name of it she told me. They want to be able to bring the grand kids out and have them stay the night, and that won’t work in the RV trailer they have right now.

I’m excited over their grandkids being able to come out here, too. They live in another province, so I hardly ever get to see them, and they’re growing so fast!!!

There are going to be so many changes here over the next few years!

The Re-Farmer

They’re here! Plus another outing, and I just couldn’t resist.

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I got a call from home care last night.

No med assist for my mother this morning, nor for tomorrow morning.

*sigh*

Which meant I was out a bit earlier to feed the cats and do my rounds, but I didn’t have time to water the garden. The heat is on and is staying for the next few days, so we will likely be watering twice a day again. My daughters took care of the watering while I was out.

When setting out the cat food, I’ve been putting some in a try by the back door of the garage, where the garage kittens have been hanging out. Usually, I see them playing behind the garage, then running to hide as soon as I come near. They weren’t there this morning, though their mother followed me.

It wasn’t until I was heading back to the house with the bowl that I saw them! The white and black one was at one of the water bowls. It is a large former heated water bowl and was needed refilling, so the kitten was basically climbing the side of the bowl to be able to get to the water. The smokey one was a few feet away, chewing on some taller grass. As I very slowly and quietly got closer, it saw me and ran away…

In the direction of the house!

I still had to put the food bowl in the sun room, so I tried to skirt around, worried I would scare it away completely, but nope.

It ended up running into the sun room – then started eating!

I ended up leaving the bowl outside and finishing my rounds, leaving the water refills for later, so as not to scare them off.

I am so happy they have finally come to the house!!

That done, I was soon on the road to mother’s. When I called her about it last night, I remembered to ask her to make a shopping list so I could do her groceries as well. She had that ready when I got there. After giving her her medications, we went over the list, and added a few more things to it.

Her shopping goes pretty fast, so I was soon back and putting things away. My mother was getting dressed for the day and asked me to rub some Voltaren on her lower back, where things have been bothering her. The morning med assist with home care has extra time to do stuff like that for my mother. She tells me they don’t do a very good job of rubbing it in, though!

There were only a few odd things with my mother on this visit. During conversation, it got around to getting the door fixed, and I told her it was going to cost over $4000. She had asked me to let her know how much it would cost some time ago. I did mention it shortly after we got the estimate, but she got distracted by something and I don’t think she heard me. Her immediate response when I told her the amount today was, “I don’t believe it.” I’m not sure if she was accusing me of lying, or that the company was over charging. I went with the latter and told her that my brother had replaced a door on his house – just the door, not the frame – and did all the work himself, and it still cost them over $2000. That was years ago, too, before all the prices started going crazy.

She still doesn’t believe it.

Since she did ask, I mentioned a few other things we’re dealing with when she suddenly got all overwhelmed, saying it was “too much for me” and too much for her to deal with.

???

I said to her, I’m not expecting you to do anything. I’m just telling you about it! This isn’t for you to fix. Then I realized what was going on and added, I’m not our vandal. He used to go to her for money constantly – and she would give it to him! He got many thousands of dollars out of her, and I think she was expecting me to ask her for money. Now, she did imply that she would help with the cost when she first told me to let her know how much it would be, but this is my mother we’re talking about. She’ll throw money at our vandal at the drop of a hat, likely due to some odd feeling of guilt over how he’s turned out. Especially after the youngest of my brothers died, and he took full advantage of that. When it comes to me or my brother, however, she will often make promises about paying for things, then try to back out at the last minute. She did that when it she said she would pay for our moving out here to take care of the place, then tried to do it again with the new roof. So I don’t ask. She still acts as if I’m making demands of her.

Makes it very hard to have conversations with her at times.

As I was getting ready to leave, my mother asked about our crab apples. I told her, we won’t have apples until the end of August on one tree, end of September on the others. Well, someone had left a big box of crab apples in the common room, and she’d taken some for herself and for me. I’d seen the apples in the box and, while I knew my mother would have picked the best she could find, they weren’t in good shape. She started bagging up some crab apples for me and I tried to tell her we didn’t need any, I just did our big stock up shops, we have plenty of fruit, etc. She scoffed and started telling me how I should cook them, what I should do with them. All desserts. I told her, we’re not really dessert people. She scoffed again and said she was saving me money by giving them to me. I’m not sure how, but she then started talking about how I should be cooking our own food, and I would be saving money by cooking…

???

I told her, of course, I’m cooking. What does she think? We get food out of the air?

She started talking about how we’re “modern” and about food in boxes.

So… because I didn’t want to take the crab apples, she thinks I don’t cook, and we only eat prepared food from boxes?

I told her, do you know how expensive boxed food is? I do the cooking!

Ah, but we must be buying boxed food all the time, and that’s why we’re always short on money.

…

So…

Things are tight (which I didn’t even talk to her about in any way) isn’t because everything is breaking down and needing to be replaced or repaired. Not because the cost of living has gone through the roof. No. It’s because, in the almost 40 years since I moved off the farm, I apparently never cooked and we only eat prepared food.

I told her she was starting to make things up, just like our vandal. Her response? Well, I guess he had to learn it from somewhere.

…

*sigh*

So I now have a bag of bruised crab apples. We’ll find something to do with them. They won’t go to waste. My mother does have an incredible talent at making what was supposedly a gesture of kindness into a pretty nasty attack on my uselessness as a human being. Absolutely bizarre.

Ah, well. Not much we can do about it.

I had considered going back to the grocery store for ourselves, but just didn’t have the energy. I had tried to go to bed early last night, but that didn’t work. My left hip was particularly bad last night, so I got up to take painkillers – the first since I’ve been on anti-inflammatories – but didn’t have a water bottle handy. I now have a small drinks fridge in my bedroom that my daughters gave me to make space for the AC upstairs, so I just had to stand up and take two steps to get a water bottle.

Instead, I got hit with a Charlie Horse in my left thigh. I couldn’t even stand up, never mind take those two steps.

It’s been a a while since this has happened!

Thankfully, what I could reach was the Tei Fu lotion. Also thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as others I’ve had, and the lotion soon did its work. Getting back to sleep after that, though, was not easy, as my leg would still twitch and twang as if it was going to start cramping up again, for hours.

Being as tired as I was, and after dealing with my mother – and this her on a good day! – I was more than ready to just go straight home.

As I write this, it’s coming up on 5pm, and I’ll be heading out to do the evening yard cat feeding. I’m not looking forward to going out there. I think doing my evening stuff in the heat yesterday is what triggered the Charlie Horse last night. Plus, we’re still in the hottest part of the day. We already hit our expected high of 28C/82F, while the humidex put us at over 30C/86F. We’re not expected to cool down to our overnight low of 16C/61F until 6am tomorrow, and then it’s going to scream right back up again. There is rain in the forecast but not for another 4 days.

Definitely need to water the garden again tonight. I did use that Shake ‘n’ Feed fertilizer on most of the beds, so hopefully that will help with every watering as well.

Speaking of gardening.

Yes. I did it again.

I placed another seed order.

What can I say? MI Gardener went from having a 25% off sale, to a 40% off sale.

This time, I got some more unusual items, as well as varieties that I want to try at some point. Most of this is pure seed inventory stuff. I’ve already got the order confirmation, so I’ll write about that in my next post.

After I feed the kitties.

I wonder if the garage kittens are still close to the house, getting to know their cousins?

The Re-Farmer

Alert kitties, and an update

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I was able to record all four of the feral kittens that come to the shrine feeding station, together with Mom, all in one shot!

As you can see in the video after the image in the slideshow above, they are all very nervous and alert!

Sadly, I ran out of canned cat food last night, so no kitten soup this morning. I can tell they were waiting for it! That got taken care of with our first stock up shop, today. I’ll follow up on that in my next post.

I completely forgot to do an update after I got home from meeting with my friend, then seeing my mother, yesterday.

This turned out to be one of those “fine threads” situations. Since no one in my family was available to drive me to my mother’s town and pick up the truck from the garage, my friend was a sweetheart and drove me.

Being paranoid about vehicles the way I’ve become, I had to ask her about the noise her car was making. She said it was her transmission. Her car, a Toyota, has a recall on transmissions, and it hadn’t been done yet.

I suggested she talk to the guy at the garage about it. Which turned out to be a really, really good thing.

After talking to him, and going for a spin, he thought it might be the wheel bearings, except it wasn’t acting like it was the wheel bearings. So an appointment was booked, accidentally missed, then rescheduled for yesterday.

Originally, my friend was going to pick me up at 8am and we were going to drive in together. After doing my mother’s med assist on Sunday night, I realized I would have to run errands for her. I suggested to my friend that I take my truck and meet her at the garage. So that was arranged.

Since the garage opens at 9, and that’s when she was booked, I didn’t leave until about 8:30. I got to the garage before 9, yet there she was, watching as her car was already on the lift!

When I got there, the owner/mechanic was manually turning her rear driver’s side wheel, which is where he narrowed down as the main source of the noise, though the front tire was also making noise. He was really excellent as explaining to her what we were hearing, which was a normal sound, as he spun the tire. What he couldn’t do was spin is fast enough to hear the other noise. He was going to have to take the tire off and try to see what was going on.

So I took my friend out for breakfast.

We had an excellent time, catching up with each other. I mentioned to her about my mother’s medications and that I wanted to go to the pharmacy and see if her bubble packs were ready. The pharmacy is right near the garage, so that’s where we went next. I had just parked the truck and we were chatting when I spotted what I thought was her car, driving by behind us. It turned the corner and drove past on the other side, so we could see that yes, the mechanic was driving her car around the block!

She walked over to the garage, just as he was pulling back in, while I went to the pharmacy. My mother’s bubble packs were ready, and I found out how much they were. I didn’t pay for them because, the last time I did that, my mother got really angry and seems to think it cost as much as it did (she expected it to be “free”) because I used my card to pay for it. The folks at the pharmacy are quite familiar with my mother and her… peculiarities, shall we say! She completely understood why I just wanted to know how much it cost. I’m glad I did stop by, because there was no arrangement for delivery, from what I could tell, and my mother didn’t have any evening meds left for Monday, though she did have a full day’s worth for Tuesday.

Once I got the information, I headed over to the garage.

I could tell as soon as I walked in and saw them talking at the counter, that the news was not good.

My friend’s brakes were severely worn out, with the driver’s side half the thickness as the passenger side.

Worse, he couldn’t do anything about it.

One problem was that his 6 month old $10,000 diagnostic computer couldn’t connect with her on board computer. They can’t talk to each other. He’s never had this happen before, even when working with other Toyotas. Since he can’t connect with her computer, he can’t do the repair. He could jerry rig something together and it might last 6 months, but he wasn’t going to do that.

She was going to have to go to a dealership, and they charge typically twice as much for everything, including both parts and labour.

My friend was really unhappy to hear that, as the dealership has been really awful to her. One of the more recent issues was about the transmission recall. She phoned them about it and the guy she was talking to said, oh, I see you’ve missed a payment. She had only two or three payments left (the last payment was made just a week ago). She said yes, I missed one payment in 4 years – and what does that have to do with my transmission? To which she was told, “we can’t do anything for you”, and he hung up on her. !!!!

I don’t think that’s even legal when it involves a recall. The mechanic didn’t know for sure, but he said it shouldn’t be!

That was just one example. Knowing the dealership she went to, he had more. Turns out he had a story involving someone that turned out to be a mutual friend. She had towed her vehicle to the dealership and they told her she needed a new engine. Which would have been $8000 at the time.

She had it towed to him and he took a look.

Her engine was flooded. That’s all.

He told her about another location in the city, but they’re franchises owned by the same parent company. The only other one he knew of that was NOT a franchise dealership is in another small city that’s a 2 hour drive away.

My friend is going to take it there, because she refuses to deal with the place in the city.

He spent time explaining to her what he did, what he was, and why he couldn’t figure out what was going on to cause her brakes to wear like that. There’s something happening that he can’t see, nor diagnose with the computer. When he first mentioned the problem, I suggested proprietary software, but he said that’s illegal. They can, however, make it so that it’s really, really hard for anyone else to be able to do anything. Whatever the problem is, he can’t tell.

For now, he says he’s not worried about my friend driving her car normally. The way he put it, he could tell she isn’t a “rally driver”. The problem would be if she had to suddenly brake to avoid an accident, the brakes might not work. She needs to get it fixed as soon as possible.

I could see my friend was getting really worried, so I asked if he could give some sort of ballpark figure on how much it will cost, so she at least had some idea. That’s the issue. If he did the work, with what he charges for labour per hour, and being able to use off label parts, it would be a few hundred dollars. At dealership prices and how long they tend to charge for, it’ll be probably more than double that. She’s probably looking at $800 or more to get it done at a dealership.

But it’s her brakes, and there’s no messing around when it comes to brakes! They need to be done!

At least we know that where she plans to go is likely to be ethical about it. The entire town (city? I’m not sure if it’s officially big enough to be a city) has a strong reputation for reputable car dealerships. A lot of people will go out of their way to get vehicles there. So she should be in good hands.

Since he had to take her tires off, he made sure to let her know she needs to get her tires torqued between 50 and 100km. She didn’t know what that was, so he explained it to her. Since she lives in the town nearest us, I recommended to go to our regular garage. We reassured her, no one will charge her for torquing her tires.

Then she asked how much she owed him.

Nothing.

He said he couldn’t do anything to fix her car. He couldn’t even diagnose it properly. He wasn’t going to charge her for anything.

She was so thankful! He spent more than an hour trying to diagnose her vehicle, and no one would have had an issue with him charging for his time. She tried to pay him anyhow, but he refused.

What a good man.

From there, we parted ways. Given the distance to town, she was going to go straight to our regular garage and get her tires torqued sooner rather than later.

As for me, I headed over to my mother’s.

She was surprised to see me, even though I told her I’d be in town and wanted to take care of getting her medications. I told her how much is was going to be, and she asked me to pick something else up for her as well. She gave me the cash for it, but couldn’t find her loyalty card anywhere. She kept looking through her purse, but she has so many odd things in there, and has a habit of going through it and moving things around. After a while, I told her it was okay; I could just get her stuff and she could keep the receipt to get her points later. The only thing she uses them for is to get cash back off her purchases, so they add up.

After I picked her stuff up at the pharmacy, I tried going to a small department store across the street to see if they had some sort of organizer wallet for my mother. Unfortunately, the only designs they had were not accessible for my mother’s arthritic and twisted hands.

My sister works at a Walmart, so when I updated my family, I asked if she could keep an eye out for something that would be easy for my mother to use.

Once I got my mother’s bubble packs home, I made sure to put them into the lock box, before she had a chance to hide one of them away. When I went to open the combination lock, I realized that it was already on the combination. Whoever did her morning meds forgot to roll the tumblers after they closed up the box!! Thankfully, my mother didn’t try to open the box herself!

All of this was done by 11:30am, and my mother’s Meals on Wheels would soon arrive. She was looking really tired and overwhelmed, too, so I didn’t stay for very long. My mother wasn’t the only one feeling tired! As soon as I got home, I crashed in bed and didn’t get up until it was time to feed the outside cats!

Which means I didn’t get much done at home. Laundry doesn’t count. 😄

Today hasn’t been any more productive at home, either, but at least I got the shopping done!

Which will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer