I took the truck in to get things checked out; along with the “service tire monitoring system” warning on the computer display, I started to get a “left rr tire low, add air” warning. Plus, the check engine light was still on. The battery needed to be looked at, too.
I dropped the truck off, then headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things and wait until I got a text to come back for the truck. This was just a look-see appointment, not an appointment to get any work done.
When I got back, he explained about the sensor issues. And it is sensors that are the problem, not actual mechanical problems. The tire module probably has a low battery, so that will need to be replaced. The part is a somewhat over $60, from what he could remember. As for the battery, he checked, and no, HE did not replace it. The previous owner had replaced it. He looked it up and it’s a 2019 battery, so past warranty. He recently changed suppliers, so he couldn’t give me an idea of the cost.
Overall, though, we should have no problem waiting until December to get this done, if we have to. The priority would be getting a new battery. The sensors are just turning on lights.
That was when I commented about the computer display, and how the manual said there was a control panel for it in a location that is not included in this model, and there’s no button.
Yes, there is!
Of course, I had to get him to show me exactly where it is, because we’ve looked and looked. There HAD to be something, but we just couldn’t find it.
He showed it to me, and I STILL had to stick my head right in to see it.
I took this picture of the dash after I parked at home. Can you see it?
If you spotted it in that V between the top gauge on the right, and the speedometer, you’ve got good eyes! We LOOKED in that area! We looked all over the console. We missed it completley.
He got a laugh about that.
Once I had the truck back and the groceries loaded, I parked long enough to message my family, then cycled through the computer display. I’ll have to spend some time going through the different displays to see what some of them are for, and how to use the trip function, but the main thing is, I was no longer seeing that “service tire monitoring system” thing anymore. I was finally seeing the odometer reading!
Also, the temperature in Celcius.
It took me a moment to figure out why there was a W above the temperature when I realised I was driving West. It has a compass display, too! Woo Hoo!!!
Yeah, it doesn’t take much for me to get all excited. 😄
He asked me to text him tomorrow and remind him to look up the prices of things and send me an estimate. He’s been very busy lately, mostly with tires! Even as I dropped the truck off, he was taking delivery of a cargo van load. People are getting their winter tires, so it’s a good busy!
I will probably not be home for much of tomorrow, though. Thankfully, it was warm enough today, and the ice is all melted off the roads. I will be calling my mother later to confirm, and am expecting to help her with some errands tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow is also supposed to be our last “warm” day. I’ll have to get the girls to take care of the winter mulching for me. I’d rather be working outside and taking advantage of the last warm day. My mother seems to have developed a strange gift for disrupting our ability to get things done that are weather dependant!! It’s not like she pays attention to the weather forecasts and plans this, either. Ah, well. It is what it is!
First, though, I need to have myself a late supper. I was in town for far longer than I expected, and didn’t think I’d need to get food while I was out!
In this case, it’s having the garbage and recycling bags in the box of the truck, rather than stuffed in the back of my mother’s car, behind my head as I drive.
I made sure to grab a long handled garden cultivator tool to grab the bags that got pushed further in. Most bags had drawstring ties I could grab with the teeth and pull forward. A couple smaller bags didn’t have the same ties. I could grab them and roll them forward, but had to be careful not to tear holes in the bags. It worked out very well.
Next, I drove into town to pick up some prescription refills my husband ordered yesterday, while I was in the city. Along the way, the check engine light turned on again. After I got the prescriptions, I hooked up the OBDII device and did a scan. Once I got the reading, I took a screen cap, then cleared the codes. While I was doing that, I started getting a warning that the battery was low, and to start the engine!!
So I swung by the garage before heading home. It’s Saturday, so our mechanic wasn’t in, but I talked to the guy that was there and showed him the codes. He couldn’t say for sure (there’s a long list of possible causes that comes up when I generate a report), but looking at the 3 different but related codes, he thinks it is electrical. It could be as simple as a loose wire.
Which is when I brought up the low battery warning. That seems to confirm its an electrical issue. Whatever is causing the codes to come up may also be draining the battery.
The truck is fine to drive, though. I’ll just have to talk to our mechanic next week about checking it out. Decisions can be made after he confirms a cause.
Once at home, I put the charger on the battery again! 😆
Meanwhile, on a more adorable note…
… I seem to have lost access to my office chair!
What a difference in sizes between Cheddar and the Littles!
Pom Pom is getting big enough we now let him out of the room. These two are still so tiny, they only get supervised tours. 😆
My husband had his medical appointment this morning, so we got to give the truck its first real test.
I did end up having to fold up both bench seats in the back to fit his walker. With just the seat behind the passenger seat folded up, the walker fits at a angle, which makes one wheel just an inch or two too far for the door to close. The part of the bench seat behind the driver’s seat that folds is 2/3rds of the seat, so it would fit just fine, there, but that’s not where my husband is, when it comes time to load and unload it. If we are ever driving with all 4 of us, the walker would just have to be laid down in the box and secured. With the cover on the box, that would work out just fine, too.
As for getting in and out, he has an easier time of it than I do, being considerably taller than I am! Not having to fold himself down into a tiny seat in a tiny car, all on its own, makes a world of difference!
The appointment went as well as such things go with him. He’s going to be tried on a new medication to try and get his blood sugars down and, hopefully, allow him to reduce his insulin. Part of the problem with insulin is that it causes weight gain, and that’s sure as heck not helping his injured back any. He hasn’t had his Ozempic for a while, now. Because of how high his dose is, he gets it in special ordered pens with a lot more in them; with the “regular” dose versions, he’d be going through a pen a day, and it’s a lot more expensive, even with coverage. The pens he needs, though, are not available. He opted to skip it for now, rather than go for the more expensive smaller dose pens he’d have to buy twice as much of.
So he’ll be taking this new medication for 3 months, then get some bloodwork done to see if it helped any, or if the dose needs to be changed, etc. This medication is supposed to also be good for his heart, though he hasn’t had his heart tested in a very long time, what with the heart clinic in the city being unwilling to accommodate his disability.
Armed with a new prescription, our next stop was at the pharmacy. The new medication needs special “permission” for coverage, though, and that involves some paperwork between the doctor and the insurance company. It was expensive enough that I couldn’t just get it without coverage, unfortunately. Since he’s going to have to really keep on on monitoring his sugars while on this medication, I got more test strips and lancets and, since it’s been more than a year, he qualified for a free glucometer with the purchase of test strips. I don’t think we’ve every had to pay for an actual glucometer with that particular deal.
After his stuff was done, I had my own prescription to refill, which is extremely simple compared to my husband’s convoluted medications. While I was waiting, I remember to ask about the Ozempic. Still nothing, and no estimate as to when they will be able to provide more. The problem, of course, is that Ozempic is being used by people who are not diabetic as a weight loss gimmick. Which is disturbing enough on its own, but that enough people are getting this super high dose for it to run out completely is quite alarming. This stuff has some pretty terrible side effects, and you can’t just take it, loose weight, then stop taking it. It’s basically Ozempic for life. She said she expected the fad to fade away in about 5 years, like previous weight loss drug fads. I sure hope it takes less than 5 years! I just can’t imagine deliberately taking something that can cause such incredible problems with the digestive system, including losing control of the bowels, just to lose a few pounds. For some diabetics, it can work very well. It doesn’t seem to be doing much for my husband, other then add to the long list of side effects he’s already dealing with. It certainly isn’t resulting in weight loss, but he’s also been on at least two medications that cause weight gain for much longer than he’s been on the Ozempic.
As you can see, everyone has pretty much given up on any treatment for his back injury. There really isn’t a fix for that, and pain control has never been very successful on any of the different medications they’ve maxed him out on. With his current medication (two versions of the same drug; one fast acting and one slow release), it seems he’s actually been a sort of test case on just how high they can safely increase the dosages to. And he’s already been told, right from the first diabetic nurse he saw after he became officially disabled from it, he won’t be able to control the blood sugars until he can control the pain.
Not much quality of life in his situation.
Having said that, while we were driving around and talking about the truck, he actually brought up wanting to make a trip into the city to visit family. !!! Which is really amazing because, even with the van, he always balked at taking longer trips.
By the time we were done with everything, it was past lunch time, and neither of us had had breakfast, so we decided to go to the new DQ for a sit down lunch. That sure hit the spot! He also got more to bring home as a surprise for our daughters.
It was late enough when we were finally heading home that the post office was open after its mid day break, so we stopped by. I was hoping our lysine for the cats had come in, but apparently it’s backordered right now. There were, however, other packages waiting, including two surprises!
M, you are amazing!
That hose will be for the garden tap we will be installing. As we are able, we will get pipes that hose can be run through and buried, and a few other fittings. The plan is to have everything ready for next spring, when we can dig up the rest of the existing pipe and set up a nice tap and vegetable washing station at the garden. I had been looking at heavy duty hoses at Walmart and Canadian Tire. It never occurred to me to look for metal contractor grade hoses online.
As for the other box…
Just look at those beautiful clear eyes!
… Tiny: The Beast, got to be the first to test it out! This is for the outside cats, in the winter. It works by “reflecting” body heat back. No electricity required. I’m sure the outside cats will love it!
In other things, this was a highly interrupted post. I got a call from the roofing company that did our roof last year. My brother had gone up this year and noticed some shingles lifting, which will be fixed under warranty. However, we had that one driving rain that resulted in rain dripping around the chimney to the old cook stove in the kitchen, which has never leaked before. My brother talked to the roofing guy about it, and he said that chimney doesn’t have a proper collar on it. Which apparently it never has, but it also has never leaked before. Either way, my brother made arrangements, and the guy went searching for a collar that would work. the problem is, the roof over the old kitchen is a lot steeper than anywhere else on the house, which, I’m told, is why there was never a collar on the chimney. The angle is wrong.
Well, it seems the guy found something that will work, and he’s now on his way over to fix it, and fix the loose shingles my brother spotted. It’s awfully late in the day for this – it gets dark so fast, this time of year! – but we’re glad that he’s going to get it done.
Aside from all this, there is also more delays in regards to the financing for the truck, if you can believe it!
Oh… time to pause. The roofing guy is almost here.
Well, that’s done.
The collar he found was clearly too small for the chimney, but he went up and did the other warranty covered work, which included sealing around the chimney. He found a gap where he could see water would have gotten in, in a driving rain. He even sealed around the top of the chimney, under the cap, and around a join near the bottom, which had been sealed long ago and was starting to crumble. He even added sealant under some shingles that were over lapping the sort of collar at the base, and the base itself. It will not leak again! He even went around the roof and tacked down anything that looked loose, and sealed around openings above the bathroom, just in case.
In the end, he figures it will not leak anymore, and a collar would not be necessary. It will be up to my brother if he still wants it done, as it is not covered by warranty. Having watched him thorough he was, I don’t see a need!
One more think off the list…
So… where was I?
Oh, yes.
The financing thing.
Before we left this morning, I got an email from the finance lady. The lender had a whole bunch of stuff they needed, now that the vehicle has been insured and sold. Most of that, our mechanic already had copies of that he could sent. In fact, the list was really meant for him, since it included how he wanted to be paid!
Yeah. He still hasn’t been paid, other than our down payment!
One thing they wanted was a copy of the registration in the borrower’s name.
That would be my husband. Who no longer drives and no longer has a driver’s license. I clarified that part but let her know I could get some of the rest for her, if our mechanic couldn’t provide it, since we now have the truck, but it would have to wait until after we got back from the doctor’s.
I took the truck out of the garage so it would be easier for my husband to access and started taking the photos the lender wanted, but couldn’t get a photo of the dash with the mileage. The littler computer display screen it would be on had a warning for a low tire in the rear. Which isn’t low. I saw them top all the tires up, and double checked. It’s fine. I hooked up our OBDII scanner and cleared the codes, but that one kept coming back.
I texted our mechanic about it. When we got to the clinic, the display changed to “service tire monitoring system”. He figures the module needs a new battery, because he knows it’s all fine. I have no doubt; now that I have all the paperwork for the safety, I have a list of all the things he took care of before putting it up for sale! Yeah. I’m even more sure he took a loss on this one.
After we got home, I was going to email the financing lady to see if there were still things she needed that our mechanic couldn’t provide – only to have her phone me before I started! One of the things was a photo of the VIN sticker on the door, which I already got a photo of. The other was more involving my husband’s ID confirmation. They wanted something mailed to him within the last 30 days that has his name and address on it.
His birth certificate name, not the name he uses, which is his second name, as traditional among his Acadian family.
We already sent all sorts of things to them, but they were either with the “wrong” name, or they didn’t have his address. Even his proof of income had his given name, not his first name. Most of the things she suggested either don’t get mailed to us, as we have gone completely electronic, or are under my name. Then she mentioned a cell phone bill.
That was one of the things he updated to include his full name, so that he would have something to show when he finally was able to come in to get a photo ID.
I logged in and checked, and sure enough, it had his full name, just like on his birth certificate, plus both our postal and our physical addresses. Yay!!! Finally!!! I was able to download the pdf and sent that along with the VIN sticker photo.
I just can’t get an odometer reading photo, because we can’t find any way to cycle through the computer display readings. The user manual shows us where the controls should be, but our model doesn’t have it.
There has to be something, somewhere, but we just can’t find it!
Anyhow…
Hopefully, this is the last thing they need, and our mechanic can finally get paid! We’re all getting pretty frustrated, because they keep coming up with all these little things that are delaying it. Everything else is done. We have the truck. He needs to be paid!
Talking to my daughter about all this, later on, she suggested we bake him a cake or something as a thank you! I agree!
On a different note, I had planned to top up the gas tank before going home, but we were out so long, I skipped it, so my husband could get home and recover from the outing. The nice thing?
The needle barely moved, the entire time.
With my mother’s car, we would have seen a substantial drop. Even taking into account the different sizes of gas tanks, the difference is notable. Now, given the specs on this truck, it’s not going to be fantastic on gas, so this is more a reflection on how bad on gas my mother’s car has gotten – and we can’t find the reason why! At least it doesn’t seem to be getting worse anymore.
So that’s were we’re at now.
Tomorrow, I have no errands to run, so hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to work outside. We’ve had some absolutely gorgeous weather, lately, and it’s supposed to stick around for a while.
Yes!!! It is done! As of today, we are new truck owners.
We are so excited!
Yes, it’s a 2011, yes, it has some rust on it, but the interior is pristine, and everything works!!!
Just look at that clearance! We’ll be able to get through things that had us stuck at home over the past few years, including last year’s spring flooding, when the roads washed out. In fact, we’ll even be able to drive it to the gravel pit and load it with gravel to use around the house, garden and driveway. We’d have to do a walk through, first, and probably clear away some rocks and trees.
And yeah, we definitely need that step to get into it. My husband is going to love it! The seats have adjustments like our Grand Caravan had, plus lumbar support adjustment, which he will appreciate the most of all of us.
It took all day to actually get the truck. After doing the necessary transfers, my daughter and I were ready to head in, in the morning. We were also going to make a quick stop at the grocery store, then my daughter was going to treat us to Dairy Queen take out to bring home. A new Dairy Queen officially opened in town just yesterday, so everyone’s pretty excited about that.
Yeah. It doesn’t take much to get us excited. 😄 But it does mean that, on those days were we’re out all day running errands in the city, we can get take out on the way and it’ll still be hot when we get home.
The first catch:
I got an email from the financing lady, saying the lender had sent the paperwork back, and asking for my daughter’s name, phone number, plus my husband’s email address. I assumed this meant they wanted my daughter’s name on the paperwork as a co-signer, because I happened to mention she gave us funds for the down payment, and would help with the monthly payments. My daughter absolutely was not going to be on there are a co-signer!
Once I explained that, she corrected my misunderstanding. The lender wanted someone as an emergency contact, in case they couldn’t reach us. I told her, she lives with us and has the same number, so if they can’t reach us, they wouldn’t be able to reach her! So I gave them my brother’s land line number.
Meanwhile, I got a call from the garage, just as I was answering the email. He was texting with her as well and wanted to make sure we understand they were NOT looking for a co-signer on the loan or anything like that.
Once that was clarified, we waited for a while, but didn’t get a response right away. So we headed into town, anyhow.
Once we got there, I checked my email and found they still wanted my daughter’s name. I gave both their names. This way, if we weren’t home and my daughters answered the phone, they would be authorized to speak to the girls about our file.
I answered that right away, then went into the garage. He was still waiting for something from the finance lady, but I was able to make the down payment, then sign the various forms needed.
While he was making the copies he needed, and waiting on the response, he gave me the keys so we could go into the vehicle and even asked us to drive it closer to the garage. Which almost happened.
The truck had been sitting there long enough that the battery was almost dead! It wouldn’t start. Oops.
The first thing I had to figure out after that was, how to open the door from the inside! It took a while, but the lever is in a completely different location than in any other vehicle we’ve owned, and I couldn’t see it in the shadows. 😄
So I let him know, he came out with a charger, and we moved it over. Then my daughter and I spend the next while, reading the owners manual and figuring out the different things on the console, set the time and date, and so on.
After a while, with still no email response from the finance lady, I went inside. He just received a text from her and said she was waiting on a response from the lender. I told him we’d run some errands while we waited, then headed over to the grocery store across the street, where we’d parked the car anyway, to do a bit of shopping. Neither of us had had breakfast yet, though, and since it looked like picking up food to bring home would take a while, we got some food at the grocery store that we could eat in the car. Of course, I kept checking my email. Still nothing.
After a while, I walked back over. As we spoke, he suggested we may as well go home, because there was no way of knowing how long it would take the lender to get back to her. Not only that, but once the lender responded, she would be emailing documents to me for us to sign and send back. It could take minutes, or hours.
So my daughter and I headed home, stopping at the new DQ first. It was just into lunch time, so it was pretty busy, but the line went fast. After placing our order, we got our number and went to the side to fill our drinks and wait. My daughter ended up taking the drinks to the car, as the place filled up even more! They were absolutely inundated, including plenty of teens from the nearby high school, coming over for lunch.
I predict they will do very well here. Especially in the summer, during tourist season.
My daughter came back after putting the drinks in the car, then when our order was ready, she took the bag of food while I collected the Blizzards we also got. She then had the fun job of balancing trays of Blizzards and drinks on her legs during the drive home.
It is not a smooth ride, and a couple of the drinks were a bit over filled! Once we reached the gravel road, she asked me to pull over, so she could clean up a bit.
I drove much slower on the gravel road that we normally would! 😄
So we had our lunch, and then I spent the next while near the computer, checking my email regularly. We did get the documents after a couple of hours, which my husband could go over and sign digitally, then send back. Once I got a confirmation of receipt, I texted our mechanic to let him know.
After maybe another hour, I texted him again, asking if he’d received a confirmation from the finance lady yet.
Of course, I couldn’t be at my computer the whole time, but it was a bit of a surprise when I was back in my room, and our mechanic phoned me, asking if I’d received his text. I checked my phone, and there was no notification – but when I opened my text app, there it was – along with a couple other texts from elsewhere!
I’m so glad he called! Now that the this part was done, he needed us to bring him proof of insurance. It was past 4 by then and, as far as I knew, the insurance place closed at 5.
So we headed out again as quickly as we could, since it takes about 20-25 minutes to get there, depending on the traffic. Thankfully, we did not find ourselves stuck behind slow moving vehicles. Once there, I dashed in to get the paperwork, making sure to thank him for calling, since I did not receive any notifications for his text. He knows we’re in a cell phone dead zone, so he figured it was something like that. He also suggested a different insurance place to go to, that was open later, so that’s where we went.
That part went quickly. There was no one else there besides the staff, and it was all pretty straightforward. I got new license plates, because I didn’t think to bring the ones from the van. I was even given a choice of one set of plates or plates from a new box, in case there was a series that I found easier to remember. I didn’t care, so I got the last plates from an old box.
Everything was done quickly, and the lady that helped me was awesome. As she was inputting stuff into the computer, she was reading some things out loud and mentioned our mechanic’s name. When she did, I couldn’t help but say how awesome he’s been for us, and she quite enthusiastically agreed with me. She’s done quite a few vehicles sold by him, it turns out, and has found he has been really great for finding people just the vehicle they needed.
(As I was writing the above, I got a phone call from the finance lady – there’s still more to be done at her end!!! But I’ll get to that, later.)
So I got the insurance stuff done, then it was back to the garage. From there, he took the copies he needed but, before giving me the keys, he wanted to bring it into the garage. So my daughter took the car home while I waited. He had some other stuff to get done first and, as we chatted, mentioned in passing that normally, he wouldn’t release a vehicle until he got the money from the lender, but it was me, so he was okay with it.
!!!
What a sweetheart! In thanking him, I mentioned that my husband has a medical appointment tomorrow, so the timing of this is perfect, and so incredibly appreciated. He and the finance lady have gone so above and beyond!
Once the bay was clear, he drove it in, and they made sure all the tires were properly full, after sitting as long as it had on the lot, and cleaned the windows from removing the stickers, put on the new plates, etc.
And that was finally it! I could take the truck home!
Almost. The tank was at empty, so gas station first!
When I first started filling, the nozzle kept shutting itself off, like it does with my mother’s car. I’ve asked about it, and I’ve been told dust gets into a line and the sensor in the nozzle reads that the tank is full. It took a while, but eventually it started to fill without stopping. I wasn’t sure how much it would take to fill that tank, but when it stopped again at just under $80, I went ahead and finished there. It turned out to be just over half full. Another $60 probably would have filled it.
Ouch.
We try to never let our tanks get below half, though, so once it’s filled, I won’t be doing any $140 or more fills! I’ll probably top it up tomorrow, after my husband’s medical appointment, though it’s almost worth a trip to the city to fill at a Costco, with their prices usually at least 10¢/L cheaper.
We’ll consider that another time.
Finally, I could bring the truck home! It only took about 7 or 8 hours!
When I got home, the girls were waiting for me by the garage. It’s the first time my older daughter has seen it, other than the photos I took last month. They were all over that thing! It’s got cup holders and charging ports, everywhere. 😄 Then, my younger daughter drove it into the garage.
Mostly.
The back end was still sticking out the door.
Between her sister guiding her from the front, and me watching to see when the door was cleared, she was able to get it in. The truck just barely fits in the garage!!! There’s a counter at the back wall of the garage, and the bumper is just inches from it, and the door just barely misses the back bumper to close it! There is no getting around the vehicle from the inside, once the door is closed!
Not a problem I expected to have. I new it was longer than the van, but not that it was that much longer! We’re going to have to put some sort of bumper or marker so we can see how closer we’re getting to that counter.
So all is settled and fine, right?
Of course not.
As I mentioned, I got a call from the finance lady. She was asking if my husband had any other photo ID, or even an old passport. Well, he did have an old passport, but that was from his days in the military. Which makes it quite old (I just thought about it, and it’s at least 30 years old). We still have it; but it wouldn’t be much good. So she asked me about some other things. Part of the problem is that his Metis ID is hand written. I mentioned his old driver’s license from the province we lived in before moving here, which she got all excited about. She also talked about the “voided check” having only his name on it. Which confused me, because the photo I’d sent them had both our names on it. It turned out she was looking at the digital form from the bank we’d recently had to send, because the banking information had only my name on what is a joint account, since I was the one logged in to get it for them. I’d also sent photos of his old driver’s license, but she apparently never saw it.
Which is when I found out that a number of images I sent her came in a form she could not open. The files were too big, so they were automatically loaded to Google Drive, but when she clicked on them, it wanted permission to access them, which apparently she didn’t get. Which isn’t how it’s supposed to work, but the end result was, she couldn’t open them.
Once I realized that, she emailed me a list of all the files she couldn’t open. I resized them, then sent them back. That worked out, except for his birth certificate. When my husband was in his teens, he had it in his pocket for some reason, and it went through the wash. It was in rough shape, so it’s been in a folding plastic case that was meant to hold a bank book (hands up, how many reading this had a bank book!) to protect it. She asked it if was possible to take it out of the plastic for a clearer photo. I said I would try, but explained why it was in the plastic. Thankfully, in the time it took for me to find my husband’s wallet (I first tried looking in his pack on his walker in the sun room; it wasn’t there, but I did chase four massive racoons out of the sun room!), I saw her response saying not to risk damaging it, and if I could just get clearer pictures of the front and back.
Which I was able to do, then resized them and sent them to her. As I was writing the above, I got a confirmation from her that they were good!
Finally!!!
So now, everything should be straight with the lender.
I hope.
If not… well.. I guess we have the loan of a truck for a few days, until my husband can get new photo ID. Which would take a while, because the province’s public insurance provider that does all that is still on strike.
Which reminds me.
When I brought the plates and insurance papers back to the garage, I mentioned that it was the last plate before they went into a new box. He heard the “last plate” part, and said they must be really worried! It turns out that, with the strike, no new plates are going out. So while private insurance companies can process things like vehicle insurance, if they run out of plates, they’re stuck. They could contact other companies to acquire extra, but they’re all running out, too. Thankfully, this place did still have another box, but if this strike goes on for much longer, people who need new plates won’t be able to insure their vehicles at all. It’s like with getting a new photo ID, a new driver’s license, or having to renew a driver’s licence photo. They can do everything locally, except actually give out the card. Only a temporary paper version that’s good for 2 or 4 weeks. Just enough time for the public insurance company to process the paperwork and issue the official government ID, and for it to go through the mail.
Once the strike is over, the backlog is going to be incredible.
So that’s where we’re at now. As I finish writing this, I have not received any other email from the finance lady, which means that – so far, at least – there is no problem with the resized and resent images.
I must say, I do appreciate that we can do all this digitally. Can you imagine if we had to go in, in person, during office hours? Even if they could fax stuff over, it would probably take days just for this little bit of stuff right here. And since this loan is under my husband’s name as the primary borrower, that would mean him having to be driven into town multiple times to sign things, which he would not be up to. Unless I were allowed to bring paperwork home for him to sign, which I have been able to do for some things in the past.
I am just to thankful for all the effort our mechanic and the finance lady have gone through to make it so we could get that truck, in our budget. It was not easy. Especially when, even with the price being dropped so much, we had another $1200 in taxes added on. I made sure to tell her how much we appreciated it, and that if I could, I’d give her a hug! (yes; I did give our mechanic a hug!!) She told me that just hearing that made it worthwhile. I know she probably deals with a lot of difficult cases like ours, and probably worse, but I don’t know that she gets a lot of appreciation shown for her efforts!
Well, I made sure to tell them, because my goodness, not having a winter worthy vehicle with snow likely in a few weeks was a major concern! Thank God!!! What a sense of relief, to that that truck sitting in our garage right now!!
Before I get into things, I just want to share this adorable photo I got last night.
Nothing like a bowl of kittens to brighten your day!
This is a picture from yesterday, because I’ve taken none today. I haven’t even gone outside, and I don’t know if I will get to it. A daughter took care of feeding the outside cats, and I am skipping my morning rounds entirely. All because of a very long and strangely painful night.
Quite a long time ago, I started feeling a strange pain in my left side. I thought I might have pulled a muscle, but it never went away. This started about 6 months after I’d had a large cyst remove, and thought maybe there was a connection, since it was in the same general area, but the doctors couldn’t find any. It got worse to the point where I had difficulty standing up straight – which could be a real problem while driving! Since moving here, I’ve gotten more tests done, and still, no cause could be found. There comes a point with doctors where, if they can’t find a cause for something, they start looking at you askance, and you can tell they think you’re just making it up, or that the problem is psychosomatic. Eventually, I just stopped trying to find a cause. The pain, if I can even use that word, is just there, now encompassing an area from my hips to under my ribs. It’s just a constant presence, but after a while, I no longer got that escalation, where I couldn’t stand up straight anymore. At least, it became more rare. Instead, something else started to happen.
I would lie down in bed, on my right side, because my left hip is more arthritic than my right. As soon as I started to relax, my left side would start cramping. Perhaps spasming would be the better word. The only way to alleviate it was to tense up and twist into a pretzel. As soon as I tried to relax again, it would come back. Sometimes, if I lay on my left side, that would help. Sometimes, I had to get up. Usually, I just went through several bouts of these contortions before I could finally relax my muscles, and then finally be able to sleep.
Well, last night, it happened again, except this time, it was both my sides, not just my left. I was jerking around like a marionette, trying to get it under control and to the point where I could relax. I’m still feeling residual pain from that.
That, on its own, was bad enough. Things didn’t end there. At about 3 – 3:30 in the morning, I rolled over, and instantly my right thigh started cramping viscously. I couldn’t stay lying down, but I couldn’t straight the leg, either, or the cramping would get worse. Of course, I had to go to the bathroom, right? I managed to hobble my way to the bathroom, but even just sitting on the toilet triggered more spasming. I even tried massaging the affected muscle, but just touching it cause more spasms. I was able to do my business, then hobbled to over to get some ibuprofen, because my extra strength arthritis acetaminophen that I take very night before bed doesn’t touch this. Ibuprofen helps with Charlie horses, and this was kinda like that, so I thought it was worth a try.
I’m still feeling residual pain and weakness in my leg from that.
It would have been nice if that were it, but nooooooo. Then my feet had to get into the action.
My feet are wrecked, so it’s not unusual for me to have a metatarsal suddenly dislocate, or for there to be shooting pains, etc. One of the things that happens pretty regularly is sudden cramping if there is a change in temperature. The temperature itself doesn’t seem to matter; it’s how quickly it changes. So, for example, between the time I come out of a nice warm shower and the time I can put on socks and shoes, my toes can start cramping, and it takes a while for them to warm up again enough for the cramping to stop.
Which means that sometimes, if my foot comes out from under the covers, my toes will start cramping instantly.
That started happening last night, too. With both feet – and they weren’t even out from under the covers.
I don’t even know how long that went on for before I finally passed out, until I was awakened by a kitten deciding to curl up against my face, neck and shoulder. That was when I realized I had all the big kittens on my. One on my neck and face, one in my arm pit, one on my chest, and two around my legs. If any of the tinies were on me, I wouldn’t have known, because they weigh nothing! 😄
I managed to get out of bed and do their morning feeding (including Butterscotch, who has rediscovered my pants shelf as her favourite bed), mostly because I needed them distracted so I could go to the washroom. That’s when I discovered I was still feeling the effects of all the cramping and spasming of the night. My daughter was about to feed the adult cats and saw me hobbling around, so she was more than understanding when I asked her to feed the outside cats, too.
Thank God we have a narrow hallway and arm bars all over the place. I needed the walls and the arm bars to hold myself up!
I’m better now, after a few more hours, but definitely still having issues.
I have considered why this might have happened, and if it was because of the work I did in the garden yesterday, but I’ve done that much and more before, without reacting like this. I mean, I’ve ended up stiff and sore to the point that walking was very painful, but no muscle cramping and spasming like what hit me last night. Especially not with so many parts of my body affected, not to mention all of them in one night.
Whatever it is, I’m currently in recovery mode for the day.
After all that, though, I do have some good news. I’m almost afraid to say something so soon, as it’ll be a few days before it follows through. Still… here it is.
We’re going to be getting that truck.
Last week, I’d stopped at the garage to talk to our mechanic, checking out some of his other vehicles at the same time, letting him know we were able to increase our down payment to $1000, thanks to my daughter. At this point, I’d pretty much given up on the truck, but he had a couple of SUVs that would have worked out, for my husband’s needs, at least. One was sold and the other wasn’t prepped for sale yet, but it gave him something to keep an eye out for.
Well, yesterday, I got a call from him.
He had been talking to the financing lady. He told her the new amount we could give for a down payment, and he was willing to drop the price on the truck even more for us. At this point, I suspect he’s actually taking a loss. He doesn’t just buy used vehicles and resell them right away. He’s a mechanic. He makes sure they are completely sound, first, so any work that needs doing, he does. Unlike the dealership that sold us our van, he doesn’t sell vehicles that turn out to have major damage on them. That has to be factored into the price, too.
As for the financing lady, she tried taking off the warranty, and that also lowered the final cost. Between the three things, that brought the payments down to $162 bi-weekly. Our max budgeted amount was $300 monthly. We would have another $100 or so per month for registration and insurance we have to consider as well. This still put us just over our budget amount. Since bi-weekly payments means having at least a couple of months a year with three payments instead of two, this put the monthly budget amount at more than two payments totalling $324. We’d have to budget closer to $400 per month.
However…
Just the night before, my daughter told me she would soon be able to transfer more over to contribute to the damage deposit, having been paid for more commissions. She has also said she will help with the payments.
I gave him a tentative yes, and mentioned we might be able to increase the down payment. I just didn’t know by how much. He told me to talk to the finance lady once I knew. Depending on the amount, if it would only save us a couple of dollars a month, it might not be worth adding it on.
So I went to talk to the girls, and my daughter said she would able to bring our down payment up to $1500.
I emailed the financing lady with the new amount. I also asked about having monthly payments instead of bi-weekly. It’s just easier for budgeting, since my husband’s disability comes in at the end of the month.
I got a quick response with some new numbers. The increased down payment would make a difference. We would have to make a bi-weekly payment for the first payment, but after that, we could call the lender directly and arrange for it to be monthly, instead. The monthly payments would be $331.
We accepted the deal.
Which is kinda scary.
First, taking off the warranty is a risk, but considering who we are buying it from, I consider that risk to be very low.
Next is relying on my daughter being able to make regular payments. Yes, she has consistent commissions, her Patreon supporters and even a few sales from her digital shop, but working freelance like she does means the monthly income is inconsistent. I know she’ll be good for it. I just don’t like it having to rely on it.
The final thing is, where in our budget these payments will be coming from. Some is what we’ve been squirreling away into our contingency fund. That’s going to drop. Most, however, will come from that part of our budget that pays for things like getting the septic tank cleaned, or hiring plumbers, or fixing my mother’s car…
But with the truck, there will be some reductions in the budget. We will no longer have to do as many trips to the city to stock up, because we can fit probably four times as much in the back of the truck as we can in her little car, and not have to worry about how heavy the load is. That doesn’t even count the space available in the cab if we fold up the back seats. My mother’s car, even with the work we had done recently, is not good on gas. At least it’s not getting worse anymore, but with fewer trips to the city, even with a relative gas guzzler like a truck, we will be spending less on gas per month. We would go back to using my mother’s car just to drive my mother around again, and as an emergency back up vehicle.
Best of all, we’ll have a reliable winter vehicle before the sow flies – with new tires, too!
It will take a few business days for my daughter’s transfer to come through. Once we’ve got the down payment all together, I’ll head over to finalize the purchase and get the truck insured. If all goes well, we’ll have a truck by the end of the week.
I just pray that nothing goes wrong between now and then!
One of the things I tend to do every time I drive my mother’s car is give it a walkaround and check the tires.
I’m paranoid about tires.
With reason.
The front driver’s side tire bothers me. When I drive, it feels like it shudders. I’ve had it checked, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. When I took my husband to his medical appointment about 3 weeks ago, it was looking low, so I checked the pressure. It was down to 15 psi, so we stopped at a gas station and I topped it up. For the past few days, I’ve been eyeballing it, and today I checked the pressure. It was just under 20 psi! I used a hand pump to top it up, because it has a pressure gauge on it, rather than the compressor, then brought it in.
While dropping off the keys, I told the mechanic about the tire and asked if they could check it, too. Then I went walking. There isn’t much to do around town. Especially if you don’t have a budget for casual shopping, but by the time I came back, they were done changing the spark plugs, and the tire was off.
The passenger side tire!
I talked to the guy that was working on it and told him it was the other tire that was leaking! Turns out they took the tire off and were checking it for leaks for about 20 minutes, while changing the spark plugs, and not finding anything.
So I waited in the office while he switched tires. After a while, I came out to talk to the guy. He had it on the machine they use to remove tires from their rims, to hold it steady and spin is as needed, while spraying it with their soap stuff.
No sign of a leak.
He flipped the tire over and tried again.
Still no sign of a leak.
He checked the pressure and it was what I’d pumped it to this morning still. Low for the tire, but I wasn’t sure what the pressure was supposed to be (32 psi is good, I have since been informed) and didn’t want to over fill if it there was, say, something stuck in the tire.
He filled the tire to the correct psi, in case that would help find the leak.
Still no leak.
They asked a number of questions about when I had to fill it last time, what kind of driving condition we have, etc. In the end, they just put the tire back on. I’ll have to keep an eye on it. At some point, wherever that leak it, until it gets big enough they can actually find it, there’s nothing that can be done.
So I paid for the spark plug work, then headed into the city.
Today was a small Costco trip. Mostly, I wanted to get more dry cat food. We’ve got Thanksgiving weekend coming up, so they were insanely busy for a Thursday afternoon! So I got what I absolutely had to, then left as soon as I could!
This is what $291.43 looks like.
I decided to go with the 11.6kg bags of kibble, instead of the usual 9kg bags. They are more expensive, but that extra 2.6 kg per bag can mean one less trip needed at the end of the month. We already got four 9kg bags, were gifted with four 9.1kg bags, and now we have four 11.6kg bags, for a total of 118.8kg. Last month, we got twelve 9kg bags, and had to buy two more 10kg bags, for a total of 128kg. Hhmm… We’ll need at least 10kg more for the month, which means anything more than that, just to be on the safe side. Well, we still need to do a Walmart and Canadian Tire trip before our stock up shopping is done, so we can do that.
Anyhow.
Here’s the price break down.
Dry cat food: $37.99 each Butter: 5 pounds at $5.49 each bar soap: $15.49 Red Lobster biscuit mix: regular $11.49, but on sale for $8.99 That’s a treat for our Thanksgiving dinner! 2 loaf bag of rye bread: $5.99 Pizza pops: case of 30 for $21.99 Mozza: $14.99 Old Cheddar: $14.99 cream cheese, 4pk: $9.49
Subtotal: $271.34, plus $20.09 in tax
We still don’t have hot water, so doing dishes is not an easy thing right now. I made a point of picking up things we could use to make food with as little dirtying of dishes as possible, so that’s what the bread (for sandwiches) and Pizza Pops are for. The girls also dug out the disposable plates we kept when we were clearing out the cupboards when we first moved here. Handy, those!
We didn’t get a call from the plumber while I was gone. Once everything was put away and settled, I called again and left another message. If we don’t hear from him soon, I’ll start calling other companies.
The predicted rain reached us by the time I was driving home, which made things interesting in places! I remembered to stop at the post office and found a package waiting for us. It included, among other things, some food grade desiccant packets, for our dry food storage. Especially if we’re going to do things like dehydrate tomatoes more often. I believe my husband ordered oxygen absorbers, too.
Once I got home and the car was unloaded, I made sure to put food out for the outside cats. Aside from being out of kibble, it ensures no cats are under the car, when I go to put it in the garage.
Driver is still here. He was very vocal in asking for food! I didn’t see him this morning, so he probably never got anything from the morning feed. When the girls and I came out to walk around later, they noticed Colin was back. I’ll admit, I never noticed he was gone. There is another cat that looks very similar to him; just not with the “receding hairline” pattern on his forehead. Nosencrantz was around, too. After I’d parked the car, I checked a few things and saw she was at the kibble under the shrine – with Shop Towel directly behind her! Clearly, she didn’t know he was there, or she would have gone up the willow again. He was just sitting there, waiting his turn, but I still went over to “chase” him away. Basically, as soon as he sees me coming, he leaves. We’ve gotten to the point that all I need to do, sometimes, is say “I see you!”, and off he goes!
The main thing is, Nosencrantz got a chance to eat. I saw Shop Towel back at the shrine kibble bowl again later, but no other cats were around there by then, so I let him be.
Oh, good grief.
Let’s see… we just had to get work done on my mother’s car.
We’re trying to come up with the funds for a better down payment on a replacement vehicle.
The hot water tank just died and we need to bring in a plumber…
And now my husband just informed us that his computer is fried. It refuses to boot.
*sigh*
I hope he can get it going! With his inability to do much, physically, he uses his computer a LOT.
His is the newest computer in the household, too. His computer died in the move and had to be replaced. Our other computers all predate our move, and are all more than 10 years old.
This would be a really good time to win the lottery or something.
I’m back from getting my mother’s car checked and partially worked on.
My first stop was the clinic to drop off the thumb drive with my husband’s medical files, only to find everything but the emergency was closed (the clinic is in the same building as the hospital). Saturday was “Truth and Reconciliation Day”, so they were treating today, Monday, like a statutory holiday.
Thankfully, the pharmacy was not closed. I went there to update my husband’s file with his new doctor’s name and mentioned it was closed. The pharmacist said they thought it might be, because it had been so quiet for them today! The new doctor still can’t refill my husband’s painkillers, though. They are opioids, which means he’s going to need to get a new, hand written prescription in triplicate to bring in. Which his new doctor can’t give him until she gets his medical records.
When I mentioned the doctor’s name, the pharmacist knew exactly who it was, since this person is now her own doctor, too!
After I was done at the pharmacy, I took the car through a car wash, then dropped it off at the garage. I was more than an hour early, which was fine.
I was just getting out of the car when my phone started ringing. Which always surprised me, because I almost never use my phone as a phone! It came up as “suspected spam”, but I tried answering anyway. I think I got hung up on or disconnected somehow. Our mechanic was outside and started walking over to talk to me. He had just talked with the lady and the financing company, and the call would have been from her!
She had called him about that truck we tried for. While my husband has no current photo ID, we did sent two older ones; his old driver’s license and his Metis card for this province (when we moved away, the Metis Federation in our new province wouldn’t recognise him as Metis unless he paid them to do another genealogy, so we didn’t bother). The finance lady suddenly realized what that second ID was and thought she’d be able to take the taxes off the purchase. That would have made the monthly payments at the maximum we could afford, but we could have done it!
Alas, it was not to be. My husband not Status Indian. He doesn’t have the number needed to be tax free. I just double checked. Metis and Inuit are not eligible for tax exemptions. Which is ridiculous, since there are people with no First Nations blood in them at all that are Status, through marriage or adoption.
Ah, well. It would have been nice. I really appreciate that they are trying so hard to get us a vehicle in our budget!!!
After dropping off the keys, I went for lunch at the nearby Chinese restaurant. We don’t normally go there, as it’s inside a hotel, and we tend to forget it exists. They have an awesome dim sum menu, though. This time, I had a combo that included steamed pork buns. They were the lightest, fluffiest, pillow-iest pork buns I’ve ever had!
When I was done, it was still early, but I saw the car was in one of the bays and no one was around, so I went inside. They were all eating lunch, and were going to look at it next, so I popped over to the grocery store for a bit, then just sat outside at one of their picnic tables with a drink. By the time I got to the garage, the car was done.
The air filter has been changed. My brother and I had no idea when it had been changed last, so I had to ask how it looked. He said that it looked really clean – until he knocked against it and clouds of gravel dust came off of it! The final bill on that was just under $65, which isn’t too bad.
The spark plugs, however, need to be replaced and those had to be ordered in. They’ll arrive tomorrow, but I won’t bring the car in again until Thursday. That will be just under $175
Apparently, Canadian money doesn’t exist in Word Press’ free image library.
Which is a bit over the budget I’d allotted for this, but not by much. It could have been much worse, to be sure! Things were quiet at the time, so we even had a chance to chat a bit.
As I was leaving, though, I turned around and came back. The brakes were screaming! Or, more accurately, the rear end started screaming when I hit the brakes. I noticed this as I was pulling out of the car wash. I told him this and he said to just drive it; it was probably just moisture had gotten into the brake pads. Intellectually, I did know that was likely it, but I am so paranoid about tires in particular! By the time I got home, though, the noise was gone, so that was a relief.
Well now! As I was writing the above, the phone rang. It was the financing lady. We talked about how there is no tax exemption for Metis. She was so disappointed to hear that! As we talked, she even looked through some of the other inventory our mechanic has right now, but that truck was the only one that could have worked out in our budget. I told her our mechanic is still looking; he knows our specific needs, and if anyone can find something, he can. It did give her a chance to ask for a couple of things. She’s got pre-approval for us from a couple of banks, but they have different requirements. One of them is to get our bank records/income statements with his name on it. I sent in pdfs of bill payments/deposits from the last 90 days, but because I logged in to do it, it only shows my name on it, and doesn’t even show that it’s a joint account. It’s messing them up! 😄
Oh, another call from her. There’s a way around having to send another pdf without our banking activity for the past 90 days. We can send a digital void check with his name on it, instead.
The other thing the bank needs is a letter of income from Sun Life. We get those once a year; my husband gets the form at the end of the year to say “yes, I’m still disabled and under the care of a doctor” and around February, we get a letter saying “yup, you’re still disabled; this is how much you’ll be getting every month this year”. The amount changes slightly every year, just as the CPP Disability does.
She is trying so hard to get us a vehicle in our budget! I really appreciate it. Our limitations do not make it easy, that’s for sure. While we were on the phone, she kept trying different things, but in the end, it just didn’t work out with current inventory options.
We were so close…
Ah, well. What will be, will be!
Until then, we have to baby my mother’s car as much as possible, because there is no back up vehicle anymore!
Nosencrantz was eagerly among the other cats when I came out to feed them this morning! She even let me pet her, but she was far more interested in food.
I counted 37 again this morning. Unfortunately, that includes Shop Towel. As soon as Nosencrantz saw him in the yard, she did this.
She was still up there when I finished my rounds and came inside. The kibble under the shrine, where she prefers to eat, was already gone, though there were still some in the kibble house. I shooed Shop Towel away, but I know he’ll come back.
I so wish he weren’t aggressive with the other cats. I hate to have to chase away a hungry animal, but he’s already chased off the other toms permanently, and I think some of our own males that have moved on have been driven off by him.
Well, we might be down a few more yard cats, soon. The homesteader we have been buying eggs from has only one cat. Quite a lovely gentleman, too. However, with having feed for so many animals around, she has a lot of mice, and he can’t keep up with catching them all! I’ve offered some of ours. Depending on how her schedule is, I’m hoping she can come over to choose. She would rather have females, as she thinks her cat (yes, he’s fixed, and yes, she’ll fix any cats she takes) would be more accepting of females. Of course, males are the ones that are the most socialized around here! However, there are a couple of females that we can pet fairly regularly. I would much rather we reduced the population of females here, too, since it’s so difficult to get them fixed. I was able to pet Beep Boop this morning, and even feel under her belly, and she has no active nips, making her a good candidate. Adam and Broccoli would also be great to go. I have been able to pet Broccoli while she’s eating, though I couldn’t check to see if she was nursing – she did bring her second litter to the house, and I’ve seen them together, but I’ve never seen her actively nursing them. They definitely are old enough to be weaned. As for Adam… she won’t let us near her at all. She was creche mother for so long, along with Beep Boop, I don’t think she would have gone into a second heat, like Broccoli did. Then there’s Caramel. She’s been an odd one, lately! If I’m going around the cat house, for example, she will run around on the roof, following me, meowing for attention and even grabbing at me to pay attention to her – but when I do, she attacks my hand, scratching and biting! Yet if I pull away, she starts meowing for attention again.
Nosencrantz is another possibility, now that she actually comes up and lets me pet her. She doesn’t want to go indoors anymore. I don’t know how good of a mouser she is, after being indoors for so long, but she would be much happier around fewer cats. Especially to get away from Shop Towel. Plus, she’s already fixed.
I miss her nightly cuddles!
Well, time to get to other things. I’m taking my mother’s car in to the garage today, so I’m leaving much earlier to stop at the clinic and drop off my husband’s medical files, first. Then grab “breakfast” somewhere. Maybe the new Dairy Queen is open by now? If it is, I’ll definitely give it a try.
This is a small shop, as I was too tired to do a large one. Plus, I wanted to focus on getting a few more cook out type things.
Before getting to Costco, I had a few other stops. A quick stop at the gas station, not to get gas, but an energy drink and a couple of small packages of nuts to tide me over until I could get breakfast in the city. While there, I checked messages and chatting with my brother and his wife briefly. The next stop was a side trip along the way, to the medical clinic. I needed to get my husband’s medical files to transfer to his new doctor. Turns out getting the physical copies would have cost more than $80, to cover the cost of printing. It would have been 221 pages.
It would have been a lot more, if his medical files from after he got out of the military hadn’t been lost! It was paper copies only, back then, and the clinic we went to destroyed files if they hadn’t seen the patient for more than 2 years. We have moved out of province again, by then.
So to get it loaded onto a thumb drive cost only $35. I brought one, but she ended up giving me a new one, when she saw my thumb drive had other files on it!
While waiting for that to be done (it took a while to transfer the files!), I chatted with my brother some more. They were going to be done their errands in the city fairly soon, and did I want to meet them for lunch? With another 45 minutes driving time after I got the files, it actually worked out really well.
We had a fantastic time together, of course. My brother had been able to visit my mother yesterday and help her with groceries, among other things. She was out of groceries, but never said a thing to me about needing a shopping trip! One odd thing, though. She’s been complaining to the social workers that come to her building about her glasses. It took a while for my husband to get the straight of it, but she is saying what when she got there, the staff member was behind plastic, eating her lunch (they no longer have those plastic shields), and that she got up right away, grabbed the bag with Mom’s glasses, gave them to her and then all but kicked her out.
Strangely, it sounds like I wasn’t even there, but that could be just the way my brother described what she was saying.
The social worker said that they should have tried the glasses on her and checked them, etc. My mother says they didn’t.
They did. They took really good care of her, even going out of their way to accommodate her mobility issues as much as possible!
Then she said something about the lady being Arabic.
The dentist she went to recently was Arabic. Not the people at the eye clinic.
So basically, my mother is just making things up, because she has suddenly decided she doesn’t like her glasses. And she doesn’t like her glasses, because the new prescription didn’t make her headaches go away. We even had the conversation about that; if her old prescription were the problem, the headaches would go away, but if her glasses were NOT the problem, that meant something else was causing them.
Not that we got that far in our conversation. Since I was the one who brought her there, helped her come in, spoke with the staff together with her, watched them make super sure her glasses were sitting right on her face and adjusting them for her, I could confirm that what she is saying now is pure BS.
I’d be tempted to say that this is a sign of cognitive decline in my mother but, to be honest, she’s always done stuff like this.
So that was interesting to find out!
While we were at the restaurant, I got a call from the garage about the truck we were looking into.
As expected, the payments were not in our budget. Even with his knocking the price down, and having the down payment that we could manage right now, it was still almost double what we can afford. Plus, the payments are calculated bi-weekly. We get paid monthly. I would hope they could change it to monthly, because with bi-weekly payments, there would be at least a couple of months out of the year where we would have three payments instead of two.
Ah, well. It was nice to think about, at least. Now that we’ve had a chance to talk about it directly, he knows that we’re good with something like a truck instead of a van, if that’s what he can find in our budget.
My brother and his wife have been trying to help by making various suggestions. One of them has been to try a dealership. They tend to offer no money down, 0% interest financing deals, etc. I finally had a chance to explain that we’ve had bad experiences going through dealerships before. As much as we loved the Grand Caravan, the dealership tried to screw us over. I remember I brought it back shortly after we got it for some warranty work we basically forced them to accept responsibility for. I was sitting in the waiting room, doing some crochet, when the guy who sold it to us came by. He came over with a big smile on his face and made a joke about whether or not I could knit him some socks or something (my fellow crocheters will understand the extra cringe on that), then he looked at my face, recognized me and practically ran away. It was that bad!
Then there was the Uplander. When getting a vehicle so cheap, I could use my debit card to pay for it, you don’t expect to have a perfect vehicle. Beggars can’t be choosers. But you do expect one that is at least safe. That one actually got reported to the regulatory organization, but nothing came of it. We had to put a lot of money into that thing. Once we did, it did really well by us for far longer than it should have, but still…
Then there were the other dealerships we tried. Nothing like talking to someone and saying, “we can afford X payments”, then get a call back saying, “we got a really good deal for you! Fantastic vehicle! Payments are only….” and the amount would be double what we said we could afford.
So… I really would rather not go through a dealership again. I have come to trust our mechanic. He’s taken good care of us.
Once I explained that, they understood.
After lunch, I finally made it to the Costco. With suddenly planning on a cookout tomorrow, that changed what I got a little bit. It was also going to be a smaller shop for now. I’ll do another Costco trip next week some time.
This is what we got. First, the “bottom of the basket” stuff.
case of Coke Zero: $14.69, plus 32¢ enviro fee Kirkland brand puppy pads: $24.99 These are 30″x23″, rather than the 30″x30″ we’ve been getting at Walmart, but 100 of them cost less than the 50 pack at Walmart. Since I just got a Walmart pack recently, we should be good for puppy pads long enough to not need them anymore, I hope! canned cat food: $38.99 9kg bags of dry cat food; four of them: $26.99 each TP: $22.99
Then there was some actual food for humans. 😄
tube of ground beef: $31.49 I plan to partially freeze it, then simply cut rounds off for hamburgers. fresh sausages: $18.18 eye of round roast: $45.19 three pack of jumbo all beef weiners: $21.99 canned chicken: $17.99 The price on that actually went down, so I got more for the pantry. tortilla wraps, 2 packages: $9.99 each ramen noodles, 30 pack: $13.99 I knew this size existed, but it’s the first time I saw them in stock, so I grabbed those for the pantry, too. double trays of 60 eggs: $18.89 sausage buns, two bags with three packages of 6 buns in them: $6.49 each hamburger buns, similar bag with three packages inside: $5.29
And that’s our Costco purchase this time. The sub-total was $426.90, plus $25.20 in taxes.
As my purchases were going through, I heard the cashier and the person reloading my flat cart say something about 8 items. I didn’t buy 8 of any one thing, so I asked, 8 what? It was the total number of items still on the cart being confirmed, to make sure they weren’t missing something. I told her, the only time that ever happened, they accidentally charged me for an extra bag of cat food, so I came back (not that I’m remembering this, I think I said the accidentally *under* charged me, by mistake!). So I just got another bag of cat food, instead, so it wasn’t a problem. She asked how many cats we have, so I told her, as best I could when it came to the outside cats. Her response?
Can I move in with you?
😂😂
Turns out, she has “only” six cats, and wants more, but her husband objects. She is also finding many strays that need help, so she tries to leave food out for them, at least. She wants to build shelters for them and stuff, but her husband objects, so I told her a bit about our set up. It’s different when we have access to at least old, scrap lumber to build things with, and it only costs us the paint.
It was nice to chat with a kindred soul. 😁
Once the shopping was done and loaded, I went to fill the gas tank. I was telling my brother, I left with a full tank of gas, and was down a quarter tank by the time I got to the restaurant we were meeting at. My brother, who knows my mother’s car really well, was quite surprised by that. He mused about whether there was a leak somewhere, but if there was, we’d be smelling gas when going into the garage, and we don’t. Hopefully, we’ll find the problem when I take the car in on Monday.
The gas station was really busy, and with good reason! While the rest of the city was at 161.9¢/L for regular gas, which has been getting slightly lower, Costco was at 144.9¢/L Even their premium gas was at 164.9¢/L That’s a huge difference! It ended up costing me just over $23 to fill the tank.
Then it was time to head home, though I did make one more stop at my mother’s town, to use the bank machine. Paying for my husband’s medical file transfer was by cash only, so I needed to replace it, since I used part of the cash I had for the septic guy.
Now that I’m home, I made sure to take the cash out and set it aside, and we can call the septic guy. He is sometimes really fast in responding, so I wanted to make sure I had enough to cover it, plus extra, just in case his rates had to go up again, on hand first!
I’m feeling pretty exhausted right now, but I want to get started on setting up the fire pit area. The picnic table that has to be moved still has tomatoes and onions on it!
I was able to run a number of errands while out today. The predicted rain didn’t start until I was just leaving the gas station to go home. By the time I arrived and got out to open the gate, it was pouring, with plenty of thunder! It was severe enough to cause some power flickers, including one that was enough to cause our computers to shut down, which is always fun. Not.
My first stop was at the advance polling station. I had to look up the location, which turned out to be in an industrial park next to the airport, rather than in town!
Things have really changed since the last election. Our paper ballots of the past have always been a tri-fold ballot, with the only change in dimensions being due to how many candidates were running. In our riding, there was only four this time. There were a number of checks and balances, such as tearing off a strip with a number on it, matching a number on the rest of the ballot, that was kept by the scrutineers, and going through another scrutineer to make sure it was dropped into the ballot box properly, etc.
Well, we do still have paper ballots, which is good. May we never move away from paper ballots! I love my technology, but security is an illusion.
The ballot itself was the size of a sheet of printer paper. It was in a specially shaped folder that covered all but the security info at the top. The scrutineer that gave me my ballot gave me instructions; holding the front of the ballot facing me, she dropped the folder open (the fold was on the bottom) so I could see the candidates list, and I was told to colour in the circle by the name I wanted to vote for. No X’s or check marks. Fill in the circle. Then she made sure to close up the folder again before handing it to me, without ever touching the actual ballot.
At the voting booth, they had a permanent black marker available, rather than the usual pencils. After marking for my candidate, the folder is closed back up again and I took it to the scrutineer that had checked my ID when I came in. She took the ballot by the folder, then placed the part that stuck out into a slot on what looked like a big, office sized printer. It was actually a scanner. The machine grabbed the ballot out of the folder, and she put it aside, having never touched the ballot directly. I could watch the scanning progress on a screen, which did not display the actual vote. Once scanned, the ballot was dropped into the ballot box the machine was resting on. No one had access to the ballot box itself.
Every marked ballot now has both a physical and electronic copy. The machine helps with counting the physical ballots this way, making things faster for the scrutineers.
That done, I continued into town. Since the grocery store where I was going to is across the street from our garage, I went there first, to talk to our mechanic. As I went in, I passed him talking to a couple who were looking at a really nice SUV.
We went into his office and started talking about the financing situation. I told him, I knew it would be hard to find something in that budget limit. We are actually approved for up to $25,000, apparently, but couldn’t possibly afford the payments for that. He said it was be very hard to find a van within the budget, though. He asked if we would be okay with something else. That SUV I had just walked past turned out to be well under our budget!
A vehicle like that would work for us, though would not be ideal. It’s something my husband could get in and out of without hurting himself too much, and the back bench seat folds down and would accommodate his walker, folded up. We would be able to fill it with a larger load than my mother’s car, to be sure, but not as well as a van.
Would we be good with a truck, he asked?
I told him, I’d love a truck! Though we would need on with a cap over the box. My thoughts being on how we were able to fit the riding mower and snow blower in the back of the van, but also needing to protect our large monthly shops from the elements.
He did have a truck available and we went over to take a look at it. It had the extended cab, but the back seats folded up, so we’d be able to fold up and fit my husband’s walker in the back. The short box had a flat cover on it, which I wasn’t sure about, but if the walker fits in the back, it’s not as much of an issue. We’d also be able to load up our Costco shopping (I told him how many bags of cat food we go through!) and it would be protected from the elements. If we had to load some something like the snow blower or riding mower, should we need to, we could just roll up the cover. They wouldn’t be protected, but that should be okay.
It also already has a trailer hitch installed, which is something we would want. The clearance under the truck is higher, so we’d be able to get out of our driveway after a snowfall with less concern. It could be switched from front wheel drive to four wheel drive, and it also automatically adjusts from using 8 cylinders to 4 cylinders on the highway, to save on fuel consumption.
Yeah, it had some rust on the body, but the inside was in good shape, and I really don’t care about the looks.
The price was above budget, but he was going to see how much he could drop it for us, plus we do have a bit we could use as a down payment. Not much, but enough to make a difference. He is going to send info on the truck to the finance company to see if they can work with it and keep the payments to what we can afford. Keeping in mind that whatever those work out to be, we will also have the additional cost of registration and insurance on top of it.
Depending on how things go, we might have to suspend the insurance on my mother’s car for the winter. Whatever vehicle we get that’s suitable for my husband would not be suitable for her, even if it does have a built in step to get in. However, I would really prefer not to drive that car in the winter at all.
Which brings me to the other reason I stopped at the garage. I’m bringing my mother’s car in next week. I’m getting him to check the air filter and spark plugs. Talking to my brother, neither of us remember those ever being checked, never mind replaced. They might be contributing to the mileage on my mother’s car getting so bad, though. Plus, the check engine light is on again. *sigh*
So we’ll see how that goes. Even if it doesn’t work out with this truck, he at least knows that we are open to something other than a van. Beggars can’t be choosers! At long as it meets our needs for accessibility and load requirements, while remaining in budget, we’ll take it.
That done, I finally made it to the grocery store, picked up a few things along with getting the water refills, then had to fill the tank again before heading home, and into the pouring rain!
While at the gas station, I did pick up a book that I’d been eyeballing. Last month, I got a book on native edible plants. This month, I got the Canadian Outdoor Survival Guide.
It’s aimed at people who go hiking or camping, flying to remote areas, snowmobiling, boating, etc., where you might get lost or have an accident. The info is still useful in general. Things like making a small personal first aid kit, or one for your car, is useful in general. Being Canadian, there’s plenty of focus on winter conditions, as well as regional conditions, which are wildly different in different parts of the country. It’s just a handy thing to add to our library.
Which reminds me of one of the books my friend sent me in a care package not long ago. The one on safe preservation methods. I’m loving it! Even the pressure canning section is pretty much up to date. What I really liked about that section is when it talked about preserving meat. It doesn’t just talk about how to can various proteins, but actually has photos and instructions on how to butcher the animals! Very useful!
We had to leave a lot of books behind when we moved here, because the weight was just too expensive. It feels good to be slowly rebuilding our library again.
The Re-Farmer 