dealing with vehicles

Well, we’re hooped, 2 down, and surprising Cabbages update

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Oh, man. What a day this turned out to be. Talk about topsy turvy!

It started out normal enough.

The deer were visiting the feeding station before seed was even put out. Tissue was enjoying watching them. We had several come by today, including the piebald.

Nutmeg was waiting his turn in the cat path as I put the kibble out.

So many cats! I count 13 in the photo.

While outside, I shoveled out the last two paths that were left to do. One was the path to the feeding station. The other was the cat path from the kibble and cat house, to the storage house.

We had cleared around the cat’s house, since we needed to open the roof up to get inside, and had tried to maintain most of it. We’ve pretty much given up on the back, though. There’s no room for the snow anymore.

The cats have taken advantage of our being able to keep the side of it clear, and have managed to still access the space under the cat house. Only the smaller cats can fit into there!

This is the opening they’ve managed to keep clear to get under the storage house. With the lilac bush there, we can only shovel their path so far, but they’ve packed down their own trail to the opening.

I’m not happy with The Distinguished Guest. She went after Creamsicle Baby today. Hard. I had to break them apart. Poor Creamsicle Baby was bleeding at the neck a bit, though from all the black fur on the snow after they battled, he defended himself pretty well.

Since we no longer have cats convalescing in the sun room, I went ahead and cleared the frame for the mini-greenhouse and brought it inside. The cover had a couple of tears in the back, so that had to be fixed.

While trying to figure out how to secure the mini-greenhouse, I got a message from the cat lady. She was in town and we worked out that she would leave her carriers in the donation bin at the shelter, and I would pick them up later.

She also let me know that she’d left Cabbages behind, snoring with their 5 other cats. !!

As soon as I could, after it was confirmed the carriers were dropped off, I headed out to start my mother’s car to go get them.

I turned the key, there was a loud POP, and it died.

I have no clue what happened.

I opened the hood, but there was nothing visible that was out of the ordinary.

We now have zero transporation.

Crud. We’re hooped!

The first thing I did was send a message to the garage about our van. It’s booked for a new alternator on the 28th, which is when my husband’s disability payment comes in (last business day of the month. However, he does get a smaller CPP Disability payment 3 business days before the end of the month, which falls on the 24th. Normally, that would have been our day to do a big shop but, obviously, that’s not going to happen anymore! It is enough to cover the cost of the repair, though. I haven’t heard back from him yet, and just left a phone message, too. Hopefully, I’ll connect with him soon. I did mention in my message to him, that we now have no way to pick up the van anymore! I’ll also have to get my mother’s car towed to him, but I’ll arrange that after we get things worked out about the van. We moved my mother’s car into where we normally park the van, so we’ll have to get it out of the garage, anyhow.

*sigh*

My mother’s car may have the block heater, battery warmer and trickle charger, but there’s still a lot under the hood that can freeze. My suspicion is that it has something to do with the starter.

I then messaged the cat lady.

Not only could we no longer pick up her carriers, but there’s no way we’d have the van back early enough to bring the cats in to the vet.

Also, just this morning, we had decided to make a change on which cats were going in. The cats have been after Nicco again, and my daughter asked if we could have her go, instead, for her own protection. So we decided on Nicco and Saffron, instead of Turmeric and Saffron.

The cat lady responded almost right away, asking if we could get them if she came over with the carriers.

!!!!

Yup. She just took it upon herself to take in two more cats for a couple of days, then bring them in to the vet herself on the 23rd.

What an amazing woman!

After giving directions on how to find us, a daughter and I started working on patching the cover for the mini-greenhouse. We didn’t get very far, when I got a call to confirm our location. She was at the intersection, but there was a misunderstanding in my instructions, and she turned the wrong way. She was already here!

So one of my daughters snagged Nicco while I grabbed Saffron, and we brought them to the sun room for her.

Not only did she come with her two carriers, but she also brought us some canned cat food! It was left over from Cabbages, who is now turning her nose up at Tuna.

!!!

We had a chance to talk for a while, and she updated us with some surprising information.

When the vet first saw Cabbages, he thought she had ingested the poison from something like a flea and tick collar. We don’t use those. All her bloodwork had come back healthy, yet she struggled to stay alive. She’d even had a seizure after the cat lady had picked her up from us. The eventual conclusion was the toxoplasmosis somehow getting into her brain. The treatment was the same, either way, for her condition.

Well, they’ve done another blood test. This time, a toxicology test at a different, specialized lab – a $400 test!

The test confirmed this compound was in her blood. She was poisoned. The vet thinks she got into fertilizer.

We don’t have fertilizer in the house.

Somehow, the vet thinks she was getting miniscule amounts of fertilizer over a long period of time, it built up in her brain until she finally became so very ill. Our force feeding her and keeping her hydrated with the syringe kept her alive long enough for the cat lady to get her to the vet.

We are absolutely flummoxed. The only thing we’ve got is Miracle Gro, it’s kept in the sun room, and the cats can’t get at it. Cabbages has never been in the sun room, anyhow.

While she was updating us on the mystery that is Cabbages, we also talked about Nicco and Saffron. She expects Saffron to be adopted out quickly; female orange tabbies get snapped up quickly right now. Calicos, however, are very hard to adopt out for some reason.

We also found out that she doesn’t like calico’s herself, nor female cats. However, her 5 yr old daughter has informed her that if they adopt out Cabbages, she’s moving out. :-D

I know they already have someone lined up to adopt her, but it’s starting to sound like they might be keeping her themselves. Now that Cabbages is healthy, she won’t have anything to do with the cat lady or the other adults, but she and their daughter are inseparable. She gets along with their other cats – and even their blind dog! Cabbages had never seen a dog before, but not only do they get along, she even went for a ride on him! She had climbed onto him while he was lying down, and when he got up and walked away, she stayed!

Cabbages may already be in her forever home!

Meanwhile, Saffron and Nicco will be staying with the cat lady for the next couple of days, make their trip to the vet, then stay with her for 2 more weeks. At that point, they will be ready for adoption and will stay with a foster until new, permanent homes are found.

We also talked about the next vet appointments in March. It will be worked out as we get closer to the date, but the vet is saying they would prefer to have one male and one female. We have no males indoors that need to be fixed, but we do have outdoor males that we can catch. So next time we may be bringing in one indoor female and one outdoor male.

It’s a shame we can’t catch any of the outdoor females. The only ones we could were Butterscotch and Nosencrantz who are now indoor cats, and Rolando Moon, who is already spayed and not going anywhere.

Oh, wow. As I was writing this, I just got sent a couple of photos. Saffron and Nicco have arrived at the cat lady’s home, safe and sound, and are now sharing the cat cage Cabbages had been recovering in. Saffron was comfortably eating already. Nicco has her usual stressed out expression. :-D

Cabbages, meanwhile, is helping the cat lady’s daughter colour, after giving the cat lady her “equivalent to the middle finger” then went on her way. :-D What an attitude!

I knew the cat lady had already spent $1200 of her own money on vet bills a while ago, while still having weekly vet visits. Now I found out they did that really expensive toxicology test. She has easily spent over $2000 on Cabbages! That’s just in vet bills. She’s also been feeding Cabbages a special, nutrient dense, high calorie diet as she recovers.

All the more reason we started the fund raiser to help cover the costs. At $1500, it won’t cover everything, but it’ll at least cover a substantial amount!

If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Now we’ve got to figure out what Cabbages got into that caused this. We don’t have flea or tick collars. We don’t have fertilizer. I asked what else might have this compound, and she didn’t know.

Whatever it is, none of the other cats are showing signs of being sick, which makes it even more confusing. What was she getting into, that none of the other cats are getting into?

I’m at such a loss.

Meanwhile, we are now down two more indoor cats. Since we’ve brought in Nosencrantz and Butterscotch, that brings us back to 15.

The cat lady not only brought us the canned cat food Cabbages will no longer eat, but has promised to bring us more donated dry cat food, too.

What an amazing woman!

This takes a weight off our shoulders, as we can now focus on getting transportation again. I’ve let my mother know about the status of her car – reassuring her that all I was doing was keeping her informed, and not expecting her to do anything about it. She started telling me my brother will come out and fix it. No. I’m not expecting my brother to drive all the way out here to try and fix her car. Even if we did know what happened to it! But men always know more about cars than women, so I should at least talk to him.

*sigh*

Well, whatever we end up doing will depend on what the mechanic finds, after we get it towed out to him. Hopefully, it’ll be something we can afford to fix out of April’s budget. The van is already taking up every bit of wiggle room in March’s budget. :-/

Not having a vehicle is just not a good thing out here. Yes, we’re okay as far as basic necessities. It’s more about if there’s some sort of emergency, like if my husband suddenly has to go to the hospital.

Ah, well. It is what it is. We’ll deal with it.

It’s not like we have any choice in the matter!

The Re-Farmer

Well, I pulled a dumb

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But first, the fun stuff.

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are still being kept apart in my bedroom/office (which is about twice the size of the sun room they just spent 2 weeks in), but we are allowing some of the more chill cats in and introducing them.

Nosencrantz will sometimes hiss at cats when they come too close, but not always. Lots of tentative sniffing going around. Then I put Nosencrantz next to David, and she lay down beside him, all snuggled up, for a while.

David is a favourite snuggle cat. It’s not unusual to find two or three other cats using him as a pillow, or mashed up against him.

Butterscotch, on the other hand, has discovered the laundry basket bed in the corner of my closet, and moved right in. The few times she’s come out, she’s tucked herself under a chair and snarled at any cat that comes into view. Which seems to confuse the other cats, because they typically didn’t even notice her until she made noise. However, if I am petting her as they go by, she is fine and even allows some sniffing to happen.

The forecast we had for things to slightly warm up turned out to be completely wrong. Early this morning, we hit -40C/-40F, and that was without the wind chill. So I waited until things “warmed up” to -27C/-17F before I headed outside. I hoped the cats would stay in their shelters longer if I did that, but no. They were outside, waiting for me, when I came out! They are made of sturdier stuff than I am!

Nutmeg is tired of winter, too!

I got word back from our mechanic about our van. It’s going to need a new alternator and, after taxes, we’re looking at close to $600. So that’s going to have to wait until the end of the month, and we’ll have to juggle our budget to pay for it. Until then, we will thankfully be able to use my mother’s car.

This morning, I decided to move it from the addition on the garage it gets parked in, and into the main garage area where the van is usually parked. Where her car is, the doors don’t open well, one of them is breaking, and it barely fits. We pull in closer to the inner wall, which means if I have a passenger, they have to get out before hand, because the door can’t open. The outer wall has shelving and a counter against it. I park at a bit of an angle, so that I can open the driver’s door enough to get out comfortably, without the door hitting the edge of the counter. If we have anything to unload in the back seat, it has to be unloaded before doing into the garage.

Which is a distraction that can lead to forgetfulness.

After clearing the snow and opening the doors, I discovered I made a dumb.

I forgot to plug in the car.

No surprise that it wouldn’t start.

I plugged it in, then continued clearing in front of the garage. It’s just light snow, but not something I want to build up.

Because we are now getting blizzard warnings, too!!!

Today is Thursday. Apparently, it’s supposed to start snowing tonight, and keep snowing through Saturday, when it’s supposed to warm up to -12C/10F, and get as much as 10cm/4in of snow.

*sigh*

Before heading inside, I tried starting my mother’s car again. It sounded better, but still wouldn’t start, and I didn’t want to push it. It sounds like the battery is frozen. My mother’s car has a block heater, battery warmer and trickle charger, so it should just need a bit of time. I’ve left the south facing doors open, so that the sun can warm up the black car a bit, and will try again later.

I can’t believe I forgot to plug it in. :-(

This is not a minor thing.

Years ago, while living in BC, my husband and I rented a car to surprise the family with a Christmas visit. The rental car didn’t have a block heater; no rental place we called had cars with block heaters. We stopped for the night in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, when temperatures plummeted to -61F/-78F with the wind chill. Much to our surprise, it started in the morning, but broke down soon after we reached the highway. This was in the days before cell phones, so my husband got out to walk for help. Stupid dangerous, but he got picked up by a tow truck. We spent another 3 days in Swift Current, waiting for the car to thaw out in a garage, before finally taking the train the rest of the way. We eventually learned that the engine block had cracked in the cold.

Thankfully, we haven’t hit temperatures that severe, but it can still do damage. And with the van at the garage in town already, this is our only transportation.

After coming back in and talking about it with my husband, he told me something I hadn’t known. My FIL had forgotten to plug in his car, the night my MIL had a brain aneurism, shortly after New Year’s. They didn’t live far from the hospital, but the car wouldn’t start, and he had to wait for an ambulance. Given the circumstances, it would have made no difference if he’d gotten her to the hospital sooner, but for a long time after that, in the winter my FIL would regularly ask my husband if he remembered to plug in our vehicle.

This is not something to take lightly. Especially when living as relatively isolated as we do, now.

I will give it a bit more time, then try and start it again. I’m supposed to go into town to pick up some things at the grocery store today. Before the blizzard hits! We’re running low on cat food again.

*sigh*

February is always the hardest month of winter. Everyone is so tired of the cold and snow by then. This year, we had those few really warm days that teased us with hints of spring. Looking at the long range forecast, immediately after the blizzard is done, temperatures are supposed to drop again, then slowly get milder through into March.

Which would be nice, if it happens.

The Re-Farmer

Well, she’s away!

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The tow truck arrived much, much earlier than expected!

Thankfully, the dispatcher called ahead of time and worked out exactly where we were on his map. It’s a good thing, too, because he was a mile off. The paved provincial road that runs through our little hamlet ends at the highway, then restarts again on our side of the highway, but north of us, so it’s a frequent error.


They came from a town much further away, too, which was a surprise, but I guess CAA could only call whomever was available.

Hopefully, some time tomorrow, we’ll get a call from the mechanic to confirm what’s wrong, and get an estimate. That will decide if we can get it fixed right away, or have to wait until the end of the month. :-/

Thank God we have my mother’s car to fall back on at times like this!!! Having a working vehicle is essential out here.

The Re-Farmer

Another hit of snow

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The snow started falling last night, and it hasn’t stopped yet!

We are at a relatively balmy -7C/19F. According to my app, the wind chill is -13C/9F.

I’d say our wind chill is colder than that!

It’s warm enough for the kitties to come out for breakfast, though Caramel’s expression looks like one of supreme displeasure! :-D

I am so glad we built the kibble house. It’s made things much nicer for the babies!

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz are still doing well in the sun room, though Nosencrantz did seem almost interested in going outside with me.

Almost.

I had deer hanging around the north yard and waiting for me to be done. It was the usual pair, at first. Then this one showed up.

The piebald deer has returned!

This is at least the 3rd winter she has been visiting us. I can’t remember if she started coming during our first winter here, so it might actually be her 4th winter visiting.

She also chased off the other two! :-D

I checked on the van this morning. The charger read full, so I unhooked it, then tested the van.

It started fine, but then I watched the display screen, as the battery charge dropped before my eyes, then the “charging system failure” warning came on again.

So I hooked the charger back on again.

After making sure our mechanic was good with it, I called CAA to tow it over. As you can imagine, they’re pretty busy right now, so I made sure to let them know, there was no emergency or urgency. They couldn’t even give me an estimated time. Logging on later, they have an ETS past 5:30 this evening, but I don’t expect them that “early”. The driver will have to call me for more detailed directions, anyhow, because they just have the map pinned at the highway junction nearest us. Honestly, if they couldn’t make it out today at all, I’d be okay with that.

When it gets here, we should have enough power to start the van and back it out of the garage, but I’d the battery would be dead before they could finish loading it up, based on how fast I saw it loosing charge in the display. Chances are, they won’t be dropping off the van until after the garage is closed, so they’ll probably have to use their own charger, just to be able to park the van after unloading it.

The snow has pretty much stopped falling while I was writing this. A quick look at the weather radar, and it shows the system is just passing us now. It looks like rain is also on the radar, but it is going to miss us entirely. Previous forecast of reaching as high as 3C/37F this afternoon are now saying a high of -3C/27F. I don’t know how much snow we actually got, but the paths didn’t need to be shoveled when I was out this morning, and the driveway looks driveable. Which is good, because we can’t get the little electric snow blower out of the garage. I was able to shovel out one of the swinging doors on that side, but it still won’t open far enough to take anything out, and we’d have to take the wood chipper out before we could take out the little snow blower. At least we can get inside that part of the garage now, though.

Areas to the south of us would have gotten more snow than we did. My sister wasn’t sure she’d be able to make it in to work. Their farm is one of those “turn on the gravel road and drive until it ends” sort of locations, and their driveway drifts over quickly. I haven’t heard from my brother, yet; he’s even further south, and would be in the thick of system right now, judging by the weather radar. He should be able to work from home, though.

It’s a good day to hunker down, that’s for sure.

The Re-Farmer

Can I just win the lottery, now?

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Oy. What a morning!

Things went south before I even woke up this morning. Or, should I say, things going south was what woke me up!

I still had a litter box in my office/bedroom, so our post surgical kitties wouldn’t have far to go, if they needed to.

I was awakened by the sound of Beep Beep vigorously trying to spread the litter all over my carpet.

And we still don’t have the replacement belts for our new vacuum, yet.

*sigh*

Then I went into the sun room to start my morning rounds, and found water on the floor.

Under the spare cat food bag.

Despite things cooling down, yesterday’s warmth has lead to water leaking in the sun room again, and it’s making its way through now.

And we still don’t know where the water is getting in, so we couldn’t patch it.

So I had to spend some time taking care of the bag of cat food which, thankfully, has an inner lining that kept the kibble from getting wet, and setting out a bucket to catch the drips.

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were doing very well, and enjoyed their wet cat food treat. They are getting so spoiled these days! :-D

The kibble bowls outside had been picked clean of even the kibble from the brands they don’t like. I am pretty sure I know who ate it. Last night, on the security camera live feed, I saw a very large skunk, running back and forth on the driveway, and too and from one of the sheds. Skunks don’t fully hibernate in winter, and it can be pretty safe to assume a very hungry skunk visited the kibble house last night.

When I came outside, I “caught” a deer in the path to the compost pile, half way between the pile and the house. It froze and stared at me for a while, before walking away, then into the spruces. Even as I brought out the seeds to the feeding station, it stayed and watched me until I was almost clear of the lilac bushes. By the time I was heading to the garage, to take the van to the mechanic, two deer were at the feeding station. They watched me, but didn’t run away.

The van started well enough, and no warning light or message from the onboard computer about the brakes. I left it running to warm up while I went to unlock the gate.

The lock was frozen.

We don’t have lock de-icer.

It took me about 10 minutes to finally be able to get the key in and open the lock.

Which is when I discovered the slide bar that holds the two sides of the gate together, was also frozen.

This thing is about 2 feet long, and the ice had formed between the metal of the bar, and the metal of the gate it slides on.

After fighting with it for a while, I went to the garage, shut off the van, and grabbed a tool kit. I ended up having to remove one of the bolts that holds it in place, but also stops it from sliding too far over the other half of the gate. It allowed me to pull the slider upwards, pivoting on the opposite bolt, enough to break free of the ice. Much sliding back and forth was required to scrape the ice off. The ice had filled almost the entire length where the two pieces of metal where in contact.

That took another 20 minutes or so.

The gate is being left open, now.

Then it was back to the van and off to town, with a brief stop at the post office, along the way.

We’ve got high winds from the north right now, blowing across the road the entire trip. It wasn’t too bad at first, but the closer I drove towards the lake, the more snow there was, the more drifting, and worse visibility. When I reached the stop sign to cross the next highway, it was sheer ice and hadn’t been sanded!

Which is when a new warning light came on. The battery light, while my onboard computer flashed with “charging system failure.”

Seriously???

Thankfully, I was less than 5 minutes from the garage.

When I got there, his parking lot was full, so I pulled in behind his own vehicle and went in.

But not until after I shut off the van, then restarted it. The warning light did not come back on.

Once inside, I saw that not only did he have all three lifts full, but he managed to squeeze in another car in the middle, and a utility vehicle between a vehicle on a lift, and the bay door behind it.

At least he had another mechanic with him this time!

Clearly, he wasn’t going to be able to check the van, anytime soon. I did bring in the printout to show him and we talked about what was going on, as well as the road conditions. He thought I was going to be dropping the van off and coming back later, but that wasn’t an option. My daughter still has a limited license, so someone with a full license has to be with her, and my husband no longer has a valid licence, since they wanted him to do a legal name change when he tried to switch to this province’s license. And she can’t take the road test to get her full license, because of all the restrictions and mandates against organic humans.

I would have been willing to wait, or he could have called me later in the afternoon, when he could fit the van in, but with the road conditions, I didn’t want to chance it.

I’m now booked to come back at 10am on Friday.

It’s a good thing we did that, as conditions had worsened even in the short time I was in with him. It was slow going in places, and more than a few spots were down to almost zero visibility.

About half way home, that “charging system failure” warning came back on.

I was just coming up on the turn towards our driveway when the van kicked into battery saving mode and shutting things off.

After pulling into the garage, I checked, and the battery was down to 8.4 volts. It is normally at 14 volts.

Thankfully, we have a good charger.

Unfortunately, the battery is really hard to get at. The fuse box and a piece of frame support is basically on top of it.

But, it is charging, and I should at least be able to get it to the mechanic in a couple of days.

One of the things on the list of stuff to check that I got after changing the oil, was corrosion on the battery connectors. It was something I’d noticed myself. But would that be enough to prevent the batter from charging? The mechanic suggested it might be the alternator, but until he actually gets under the hood to check, it’s just guesswork.

So, there’s something wonky with the brakes. The battery is losing its charge. We have a loose wire in our manual headlights knob, so that if I want to turn them on manually (auto still works fine), I sometimes have to wiggle it just right for it to work. The ABS needs to be fixed, and on and on.

This van has done well by us, considering the problems we had when we first bought it, but it’s mileage is right up there; I’m actually hoping to catch the odometer at 456,789.0 km, but I might have missed it on the way home. It’s old and little things are giving out, all over. We’re keeping up on them as much as we can, but the budget is just not there to get it all done.

Meanwhile, there is basic maintenance needed on my mother’s car, we have other equipment that needs to be fixed, the roof is leaking, we’re on borrowed time for our well, and the whole house needs a top to bottom renovation.

A lottery win would really come in handy right now. Not even a particularly big win. Just enough to replace and fix the things that need to be done!

The Re-Farmer

Being watched!

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Before heading outside to do my morning rounds, I could see we had a deer at the feeding station outside our living room window, digging around in the snow, looking for seeds. I could also see another deer through our kitchen window, just outside the chain link fence into the inner yard, nuzzling around the snow, looking for something.

I’m not sure what. It was standing were we unload the van, now that we can’t drive into the yard, but we didn’t drop anything there.

I expected to spook it away when I came out to feed the critters. Which I did – but not as much as usual!

The deer ran into the yard through the vehicle gate, then followed the shovelled path the back of the garage, then up to the compost pile.

It was a very casual sort of run.

I did find it amusing, how dedicated it was in following the shoveled paths, instead of running straight through the yard!

The shoveled path turns towards the house from the compost pile, but the deer just stopped and stayed there.

Watching me, as I took care of the cats’ food and water. Even when I walked across to the kibble tray under the shrine, it stayed, watching me!

It wasn’t until I came towards it, carrying the container of feed, that it and the other deer ran into the bushes.

Well. More like a fast walk than a run.

Then they watched from from the trees for a while, as I went around the house. They did take off before I reached the feeding station and scattered the feed, but I didn’t see them actually leave the yard. Usually, they take off running, jump the fence, then cross to my younger brother’s property, across the road.

These two are definitely getting used to my moving around the yard a lot more!

The cats were happy for a kibble top up. :-)

Butterscotch and Nozencrantz continue their recovery in the sun room. They got treated with a can of wet cat food for breakfast. They definitely like shredded better than pate! :-D

Both are more active, and Beep Beep even made like she was interested in going back outside which, of course, I discouraged! They seem to still be okay with staying in the sun room by themselves as they recover.

When I heard from the cat lady today, one of the things she mentioned was dropping off our cat carrier, that was used for Cabbages, at the shelter in town. When my husband also let me know that a package he was expecting was in, we took advantage of the situation and made the Chinese food order we meant to do a few days ago! You know. Since I was going to be in town, anyway… ;-)

As I started heading out with the van, just turning onto the road from our driveway, a warning light turned on that I’d never seen before. Then the onboard computer started showing a message to check our brakes system.

!!!

When I took the van to get the oil changes yesterday, they checked some other stuff and gave me a list of things to get looked at. One of them was the brake fluid. Apparently, it’s dirty.

Now, suddenly, I’m getting warning lights?

Hmm.

Thankfully, we have my mother’s car as a back up! I parked the van and used my mothers car to go into town.

We’ll be using my mother’s car until we can get the van looked at. Brakes is one thing I don’t want to mess with!

I was very happy not to have to cancel the food order we’d just made! It’s been probably a year since we’ve ordered take out, and my goodness we were craving food we haven’t cooked ourselves!

When I finally got there, the owner even commented, “long time no see!” :-D We have never ordered often, but when we do, it’s a large order. Enough to feed us for a few days, and almost all meat items. We can do rice, noodles or vegetables ourselves, but we can’t recreate their protein dishes at home! It’s enough for them to remember me, even after such a long time!

The nice thing about having to use my mother’s car is, it has butt warmers in the front seats. I was able to use it to help keep the food warm while I went hunting for the animal shelter. It’s in an industrial park, next to a small airport, that I haven’t driven around in for more than 20 years and, even then, I hadn’t gone to that particular area since I was an Air Cadet while in high school! I drove past it three times before I finally saw it. Mostly because the snow around the building was undisturbed. Clearly, no activity is happening around it. Around the back was a cleared parking area, next to the back door and a donation box, which is where the carrier was supposed to be left. The building itself was closed; a sign on the door said it was open by appointment only.

!!

The carrier wasn’t there, though, and there was no signs in the snow showing that anyone else had been there. It turned out the cat lady hadn’t made it yet, having had to make an unplanned trip to another town to pick up another frozen cat.

No complaints from me, that’s for sure!

It’ll be waiting for us at the vet clinic, when we bring Beep Beep and Fenrir in to get spayed.

So we didn’t get the carrier, but we did get Chinese food!

I’m happy with that. :-)

Thankfully, we don’t need to go anywhere else again, until we bring the cats in to the vet. It’s supposed to start snowing tonight, and keep snowing all through tomorrow, for a total of 6-10cm/2-4in. Then we’re supposed to warm right up, with a high of -4C/25F on Monday, when we bring the cats to the vet, then +1C/34F the day after!

With more snow.

Because, of course. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Stretched!

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One thing about feeding so many yard cats. Especially in the winter.

Sometimes, they make you feel really, really loved and appreciated!

In between trying to chomp my fingers. :-D

Butterscotch in particular likes to strrreeetttcchhh out for pets. Or stand in her back legs.

She’s so sweet, when she’s not vicious and mean! :-D

I had a small addition to my morning rounds, and that was to check on the van. I have a habit of leaving really, really early for things, and yesterday was one of those days that got me into that habit. I was just about to leave for my course, and the van wouldn’t start.

The battery was dead.

I don’t know why. It was working fine on Friday.

Well, my husband was a sweetheart and put it on the charger while I too my mother’s car to my course.

Having to pay expenses for two vehicles may be hard on the budget. Especially when one of those vehicles isn’t really mine, but out here, having a “spare” is pretty necessary. It’s not like we could just hop on a bus or take a taxi or something!

This morning, I made sure to start the van and check the battery level, and it was just fine.

Which is great, but it’s still a mystery that the battery would suddenly die like that.

Depending on how things go, I’ll be making our city shopping trip in the next day or two. We’re actually supposed go above freezing again, in a couple of days. It’ll be messy, but I prefer that to making these trips during a deep freeze.

Which, thankfully, is not on the horizon. The long range forecast are showing December will start to get colder at about the middle of the month, but even then, it’ll still be pretty mild for this time of year.

Still holding out hope that The Farmer’s Almanac will the the accurate one in predicting a mild wet winter for our area, and not the other long range forecasts I saw that predicted another severely cold winter. Either way, though, we plan to be prepared!

Including prepared to keep the outside cats warm and well fed. <3

The Re-Farmer

Still a bit chilly, and unexpected things

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We’re still on the chilly side these days, and will continue to be for a while longer. As I write these, we are just below freezing, and our predicted highs aren’t going to be much warmer. It’s like that mild weather we had, and my being able to do some clean up in the spruce grove, was just a tease!

I think the cats are still appreciating the kibble house, and not having to be on the frozen ground to eat. Their water is freezing solid overnight again (except for the heated water bowl, of course), and they’re enjoying the warm water they’re still getting every morning.

I look forward to when we can take that tarp off the kibble house and give it a good paint job! It’s still too cold for paint.

At least the snow is mostly gone, so I can extend my rounds, checking the fence lines, etc. Which is where I found this poor little pussy willow, desperately trying to develop its catkins! :-D At least since we cleared this fence line, it is finally getting morning sun and warmth.

One of the things we will need to do today is go into town and retrieve my mother’s car. A bit late to help my mother, though! Yesterday, shortly after noon, I got a call from my mother. When I asked how she was doing, she told me she was “dressed”. Meaning, she was dressed up and all ready to head out. !!

We had been talking about me helping her with errands when I got her car back, and I was suggesting Wednesday or Thursday, hoping it would be done by then. Somehow, my mother thought it had been settled for Wednesday! So she was all ready to go for her errands, and for me to show up at the usual time. Of course, I didn’t show up because I didn’t know this! :-D I told her I didn’t have her car, but she had quite a few errands to run, and didn’t want to delay them. So I headed out right away and, just in case, brought our little step stool for her to use to get in and out of the van. She has one just like it, but I wasn’t sure if she’d grab it or not. I’m glad I did, because she had forgotten hers. She realized this while waiting for me, outside the door where I usually meet her, sitting in her walker. She was going to give me her keys so I could run in and get hers, but it wasn’t necessary. It turns out she doesn’t need it so much to get out of the van, but getting in is much harder for her.

One of the stops she needed to make was at the Senior’s centre which, unfortunately, has stairs, so she has to leave her walker outside and hobble in. :-( I helped her with the door and saw there was quite a few people inside, so I told her I’d wait for her outside. One of the social workers that I’ve been talking to about the horrible caretakers in my mother’s building came out to chat. She asked how my mother was doing, since my mother has a habit of saying she’s having troubles when she’s actually doing pretty well, but saying she’s doing well when she’s having troubles. Which isn’t all that unusual, I’ve found! ;-) One of the things I mentioned was that my mother was getting some serious cabin fever.

Which is when I found out something interesting. Not a good interesting, either.

When our province locked down even harder (which, as I predicted a year ago, actually caused an increase in deaths and illnesses; the first uptick of excess deaths our province had was during the annual winter increase, since the pandemic bypassed our province entirely until then, and no one in either of our municipalities has ever tested positive), buildings such as my mother’s locked their doors and only “authorized” personnel were allowed in, while residents were told to stay in their own apartments as much as possible, though they were “graciously” allowed to not wear masks within their own homes. :-/ “Authorized” personnel included the social workers, and people making deliveries. Because of the caretakers, my mother would sneak me or my siblings in through a side door, as we brought her groceries in. Yes, technically we were allowed in the building to do this, but the caretakers look for any excuse to harass people. Especially my mother, who is one of the few people to stand up to them.

Well, it turns out that my mother’s building is the only one that’s still locked up. All the other buildings run by the province are open. The social worker speculated on just who was responsible for keeping the residents locked up, and I half-joked that it made it easier to “control the inmates”. Unfortunately, the joke was too close to reality. She told me that one of my mother’s neighbours is considering putting a sign on her door to turn her apartment number to “Cell ##”, because she feels like she is in a prison. To be honest, in a real prison, they’d have more freedoms than the people living in my mother’s building, it seems. The frustrating thing is, there’s nothing we can do about it. The people living there are too afraid of the caretakers to complain, and since it’s a government run building, instead of a privately run building, getting abusive employees fired is pretty much impossible. The social workers have been trying to get the problem addressed for years – long before my mother has lived there – and had their own jobs threatened, instead.

It’s so frustrating. I was hoping my mother was serious about escaping to another building in town – one where meals are included, so she wouldn’t even need to do grocery shopping – but she chose this building because her church is right across the street. She wouldn’t be able to walk to church from the other building. That and she really doesn’t want to go through the hassle of moving again, even though this time I’d be available to help with our van. Truthfully, with the exception of the caretakers, this place is pretty ideal for her. She shouldn’t have to move, just to get away from crappy employees.

What a mess.

After my mother finished at the senior’s centres, we did the rest of my mother’s errands, finishing with some grocery shopping. After everything was brought in and put away, I was even able to stay for tea. Before I left, I gave my mother a big hug. She almost started crying. :-(

Just before I got home, I heard my phone going off, so I checked my messages before unlocking the gate. It was from the garage, letting me know my mother’s car was ready! It was too close to their closing time, though. I suppose I could have grabbed my daughter and left immediately, but since I had just finished helping my mother with her errands, there was no longer any rush.

Meanwhile…

Today, I need to focus and prepare for tomorrow. We finally have our court date for the restraining order against our vandal. I really don’t know what to expect. I think the most likely thing to happen is that they will run through the docket as quick as they can, and it’ll be rescheduled for a hearing at a later date. Of course, what I hope will happen is that the restraining order will be granted. A restraining order is just a piece of paper, but it does give the police more to work with and, more importantly, our vandal will have his guns removed, and he’ll have to stop drinking. The order is for a year, and then I would have to re-apply, if I felt it was warranted, but I would hope that a year of being dry, and having to prove it regularly, will make a difference in his mental state. It’s a faint hope, but it’s there, nonetheless. There’s still his vexatious litigation against me to deal with, but that court date is in July. If he were at all sensible, he would drop that, as he has no case. It’s basically just his way of getting back at me for applying for the restraining order after he tried to break the gate again.

What a mess.

As crazy at it is, I have no regrets for moving out here. The positives far outweigh the negatives, and it’s still better than what we left behind.

Still, it would be nice if all we needed to do was take care of this place for my family, which is why we moved out here to begin with!

The Re-Farmer

Moving forward

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Well, my mother’s car is now at the garage.

It won’t be worked on today. The mechanic was missing some information on file to be able to order a new tire. Which is fine. I’m just glad I had my daughter follow me in the van!

I talked to him about what happened, and was saying the tires were maybe 2 years old. He told me they couldn’t be that old, because he hasn’t owned the garage for 2 years yet! He’s the one who replaced all 4 tires for us. I think he had just taken over the garage at the time; I remember the signs on the building still had the previous owner’s name. They have definitely seen two winters, though. So they are, at most, a year and a half old.

One of the things that I told him was that I had not hit anything, and the tire had been fine, previously. He thought perhaps the extreme cold we had might have had an effect, but I don’t think so. I mentioned the guy changing the tire thought it might be defected. Either way, I asked him to do an inspection of the other tires, just in case! Which he will do.

That done, my daughter and I headed to a nearby small town where we could drop off the paperwork for her taxes. We tried to do her taxes last night, using TurboTax, but weren’t able to Netfile it. We couldn’t tell if the problem was with TurboTax or the CRA. I actually think it was both. We figured it would be easier to just take them in and pay someone to do them. Our first year back, we’d gone to someone in town that had done my parents’ taxes for many years. He screwed up badly; my husband ended up owing thousands of dollars, and he didn’t even file a return for me, because I have no income. The next year, we went to another company in another town. The person who did our taxes has a disability herself, so not only did she fix the previous year’s taxes, but told me I qualified for the caregiver tax benefit, and was able to fix my husband’s file to reflect his disability tax credit. He still ended up owing money from the previous year, but that’s just part of moving back to this province. We’ve ended up owing money every time we’ve moved back here.

So I knew this was someone that we could trust!

I called her this morning and explained our situation. Which is when I found out that TurboTax has been really buggy this year. She had tried to use it to file her own personal taxes from home, and ended up doing them in the office, because she couldn’t get it to work! Plus, there is the CRA issue. There was some sort of security issue (but not a security breach) and they suspended the secure login information for 800,000 people. I got the email notification about that, but was able to log on through my bank (which is how I usually log on), and was able to reset things on my own file. My daughter, however, kept getting error messages, instead. We couldn’t even print out her file to mail it, because the printouts had a watermark saying, “Duplicate copy: do not mail” on them. We couldn’t get the proper forms for mailing in, anywhere! In the end, it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

With the crazy doing on right now, the tax preparers just ask people to drop off their paperwork, and they’ll call for pick up when they are done, so that is what my daughter and I did, after dropping off my mother’s car. It’ll take longer for her to get her return, but at least it’ll be done. Her sister is going to try the software first, but if it messes up for her, we’ll do the same for hers. After talking to the tax preparer, I don’t expect it to work, to be honest. The software couldn’t handle a bare bones return, never mind a self-employment one.

We took the opportunity to run some errands, and even remembered to go to the post office.

There was one odd thing that happened when we were heading out. After my daughter backed the van out of the garage, I started to close the door…

… and something fell, hitting me on the way to the ground.

I found a large screw.

I quickly popped into the garage and closed the door the rest of the way

Above the door, there is a part of the garage door mechanism, held in place with a plate. That plate is now sticking out, behind held in place with only one screw at the top.

The garage door is larger than usual, and I was thinking it looked like it’s starting to sag in the middle. My guess is that that’s exactly what’s happening, and as it sags, every time we opened the door, it was hitting that piece, pulling it further and further out, every time, until the screw finally fell out. Of course, this can only be seen if we are inside the garage, while it’s empty, and the door is closed. Which pretty much only happens when we’re trying to repair things (or get rid of wasp nests).

So for now, the door is going to stay closed, so as not to damage things even more. We’ll need to drag out the A-frame ladder from by the building my parents’ stuff is stored in, and see if we can simply screw it back on again. It’s really windy right now, so while it’s a marvelous 12C/54F right now, I’m in no hurry to be carrying a ladder across the outer yard …as I watch the trees out my window suddenly start waving around even more, in an especially strong gust! This is a day when I’m going to be checking for broken branches, and seeing if any new trees have fallen down, as part of my rounds. I might even skip the evening rounds and save it for morning!

Not knowing how quickly we’ll be able to get it done, I decided to park the van in the inner yard, where it won’t be visible from the road, in case our vandal decides to take a walk past our place again. With my mom’s car in town, that means the garage is actually empty right now! This would be a good time to take a rake to the dirt floor and tidy up a bit. :-)

After the plate is fixed and we can open the door again, though. Otherwise the dust will be insane in there! :-D

Little by little, things will get done.

The Re-farmer

Obligatory fundraising promo! Ginger’s surgery is scheduled for 2 days from now. If you would like to help support him, you can buy him a coffee (donations can be as little as $1 Canadian), or share the Ko-fi page on your own blog, or social media.

Many thanks!

Well, now

/ Re-Farmer / 10 Comments

So this lends weight to the “defective tire” theory.

I checked the trail cam files from yesterday. With the one camera, there just isn’t a view of that tire, but with the other…

I cropped this from a screen cap of the video. It’s the best I could get.

Even taking into account that the tire is sunk in mud, it looks really low!

The last time the car was used was then I took my mother grocery shopping about a week ago. It has been sitting in the garage every since. The only reason I took it out at all is because my sister helped my mother with grocery shopping, so I wanted to make sure the car got some time on the road.

I’ve just taken it out and checked the rest of the tires as much as I can. I’ll be asking the mechanic to give them a quick inspection once he has it up on the lift.

I was telling my brother and his wife about what happened, and they had the same immediate thoughts I did; could it have been deliberate? In their case, they actually know someone who had … issues… with someone else, and that person vandalized the inside of their tires. All four of them!

I don’t think our vandal did anything, though. Not just because it would be physically difficult; where the car is parked is so cramped, there is no way anyone of his size and lack of mobility could have gotten to that tire. Plus, he wouldn’t have been that subtle. If he was going to damage our tires, he would have just slashed our tires. So I don’t think this is the result of an act of vandalism.

It should be interesting to hear what the mechanic has to say when he finally sees the tire this afternoon!

The Re-Farmer