First April stock up shop: this is what $580 in total looks like

March 28, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The grand total was actually higher, but I don’t have photos of everything. 😄

Today, my younger daughter and I headed into the city to do the more tiring of our stock up shops.

I’m happy to say that Damocles ran well, with no issues, though road conditions certainly didn’t help matters much! I still expect the truck to break down at any moment. 🫤

At least the roads were better than yesterday. Today turned out to be a relatively warm (hovering on either side of 0C/32F, depending on where we were at the time) and very sunny. Which meant that the last of the ice built up in the wheel wells finally came off! With a little help from my daughter bashing at some of it with her cane. 😄

Our first stop for shopping was Canadian Tire. It’s attached to a mall and my daughter treated us to breakfast (well… more like lunch, by then) in the food court, first. So nothing there came out of my own budget.

At the Canadian Tire, we got three bags of the litter pellets we needed, plus a bag of seed starting mix, a two pack of nail brushes for the bathroom and the kitchen, plus a couple of packs of marigold seeds. I was specifically looking for the French variety, which is the one that is good for repelling damaging insects. It took some digging, but my daughter finally found some French Double Dwarf marigold seeds. I’ll start some of those when we do our next round of seeds in a couple of weeks, possibly more in May, and I still plan to direct sow some, so we should have them blooming through most of the summer.

Total damage at Canadian Tire was $48.41

As we were leaving, we stopped by a gas station and put in $40 in gas – I’ll fill the tank when I do the Costco run and reset our trip mileage counter. When we drove though the town my mother is in (again), gas was $1.729/L. In the city, it was $1.529/L!!! What a difference! Usually, it’s just a few pennies cheaper in the city, if at all.

Our next stop was Walmart. This is what $301.84 looks like.

*sigh*

This is what we got for our money.

There is a case of facial tissues, four bags of dry kibble, a flat of 24 Coke Zero, a couple of packs of wet wipes, spray cleaner, compostable compost bags, incontinence pads, and a total of 9 energy drinks for my daughters and I.

For actual food, strawberries were an excellent price, so we got two packs. We also got three packs of frozen heat and eats; chicken nuggets, popcorn chicken and fish sticks, for those days when we’re all too broken to cook. I also got four more pounds of butter, as they were still at a better than Costco price.

And that’s it. That’s all I got.

My daughter picked up something for herself, but also paid for an item I’d picked up as an unplanned extra. We found ergonomic snow shovels on clearance and grabbed one. It was marked down to only $17. It wouldn’t fit in the cart, so my daughter carried it around the whole time we did the shopping, then snuck off with it to pay for it herself as a gift for me. 😄😂

Most of this was the kibble, but still… ouch. And I didn’t even pick up more XXL puppy pads or wet cat food for the beasts this time, either! We got a total of 29 items on this purchase, and that includes the 9 individual cans of Monster.

*sigh*

By this time, we were already both exhausted and hurting, but we still had one more stop to make. The international grocery store. We haven’t been there in ages, and I was thinking ahead to our Easter baskets, for ourselves and for my mother.

This is what $279.11 looks like – and that was after discounts totaling $114.56!

Yeah, that looks pretty empty, doesn’t it?

This is what we got.

For fruit, we got a bag of Mandarin oranges, red grapes and bananas that weren’t solid green, like the ones at Walmart were. We also got a package of small cremini mushrooms.

The biggest purchase – and the biggest savings – was the ahi tuna loin. It was a “buy one, get one free” deal. This is something we get for the girls only when there are huge sales like this, and this is the only place I know of that has these.

We also got some locally made, unsliced bacon, two regular smoked and two applewood smoked, on an “Any 4 for $20” sale. There is a calabrese sausage that I got specifically for my husband, for snacking on.

We got a couple of cheeses for the Easter baskets; a little Boursin Fig and Balsamic Vinegar for ours, and a roasted garlic Havarti for my mother’s. We also got stuffed olives – one with feta, the other with garlic – for the baskets, though I don’t think my mother likes olives, so maybe just for ours.

My daughter found some sauces she remembered they were out of (I don’t use these in my own cooking). A particular fish sauce, a Siracha, and some oyster sauce. The seaweed is mostly for them, too, though I sometimes like to grab a package to snack on, all by itself.

I spotted a few other things not normally on our list that I grabbed, as they are things we typically get only when they are on sale, or they are not often in stock, so we grab when we can. One of those was some dark coffee for the girls; it’s almost never under $20 anymore, so I grabbed one, even though the girls still had a “spare” at home. Squeeze bottle pizza sauce was on sale, so I grabbed one, to make mini pizzas on the naan bread I recently picked up. I got some Twinings tea because my loyalty card offers had $6.50 off of a $7.49 package, and extra tea is always good. I also grabbed some Himalayan Pink Salt that wasn’t in a grinder. We have a grinder, so we just need a refill, but finding just the coarse rock salt on its own has been surprisingly difficult. I was about ready to order in on Amazon, so I was very happy to see it in stock.

Last of all, we got food for everyone for supper. For my husband, we got a huge Lumberjack sandwich, which will feed him for a couple of days. 😄 I got their last Bento box; chicken teriyaki. My daughter chose a Poke bowl and a Chef Sampler from the sushi bar for herself and her sister. Then, for the road home, I got an energy drink for myself and my daughter got an Arizona Green Tea – plus I grabbed an extra Peaches and Cream Monster for my daughter for later, because it’s her favourite and we hardly ever see that flavour.

One of the loyalty card offers I had available was a “spend $10, get $10 off” deal. That was after the $114.56 in discounts I got with sales, for 28 items in total. I could have used loyalty points to get other discounts, but I want to save them up again. I can usually get at least a free turkey at the end of the year with them. Not too bad, considering we don’t make it into the city to shop there all that often.

Okay, I just got a phone call from my brother and had to share this.

He just left from visiting our mother. She had told him our vandal and his wife had visited today – with his wife pushing him in, in a wheelchair. They were there for the money he thought she would give him to pay for his funeral. She told him, no. He’s rich, he has land, etc. He should pay for his own funeral. Why is he coming to her?

When it became clear he wasn’t getting any money, he got up out of the wheelchair and walked away, with his wife and my mother both calling after him to come back.

My mother said she wanted to talk to his wife, but she just left, too. I assume she took the wheelchair with her.

As far as I know, they don’t have a wheelchair. His house isn’t wheelchair accessible, anyhow. Most likely, they borrowed one of the “public” wheelchairs available in the hospital the TCU is located in.

[I got a confirmation while I was going over this post, looking for typos. Yes, it was a hospital wheelchair.]

When my brother told me our vandal got up and walked away, I could only laugh. What a scammer!!

Good on my mother for actually standing up to him. I’d been trying to tell her, how he acts when he’s around her isn’t at all like how my brother and I have been seeing him, and that he’s probably putting on an act. Yes, he’s sick, but anytime we see him, he looks quite robust for someone who constantly says he’s dying. Now, he just proved me right. He fakes it when around my mother.

And his wife is part of the role play.

*sigh*

Okay, back to the topic at hand!

Adding all our stops together, including gas, this was a $669.36 day. Slightly over budget for this stock up trip (the gas comes out of a different line in the budget), but with how late we did our last stock up trip, plus what I got locally just a little while ago, hopefully we won’t need to use as much of our Costco budget.

We’ll just have to see what the prices are when we get there, next week.

The Re-Farmer

Teeth

March 27, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I’m happy to say, things went really well today.

The plow went by last night, so I made sure to head out and clear the plow ridge before heading into town for my dental appointment.

I’m so antsy and paranoid about the truck, I ended up leaving half an hour earlier than intended – and I was already planning to leave half an hour earlier than I needed to, to get to my appointment!

It did give me time to stop for the mail and then get a bit of gas beforehand.

Of course, every time I stopped and started again, I was on edge, waiting for something to break down again.

The road to town was surprisingly bad. A lot of areas covered by blowing snow yesterday had become hard packed, icy – and melting! It may have been only about -8C/18F and windy at the time, but any dark surface was warming up in the sun quite a bit!

Once at the clinic, I started looking in my emails for our new insurance information. My husband’s employer had an excellent insurance package that still applies as long as he’s on long term disability (which ends at age 65) that included me and the girls, until they reached the age of 19. For most prescriptions and dental, we got 90% coverage.

The company has since changed their insurance package. After much back and forth-ing, we found that if he wanted to maintain the same level of coverage for both of us, we’d have to basically pay $300 a month – on top of the 10% that isn’t covered – billed quarterly. (His employer would still pay 100% of the premium for basic coverage.) Which is wildly out of budget for us. Even if it just covered him, we would have had to pay more than our budget has room for to get the same coverage he’s getting right now.

We ended up taking the only other option that would include me on the insurance. We’ll now be covered 75% instead of 90%, and to include me works out to just under $30 a month.

They will also no longer be issuing membership cards. It’s all going to be through an app.

That kicks in on April 1st.

I had hoped to be able to give the dental clinic the new insurance information, but there was nothing in any of the emails. Not even where to download the app. We’ll be needing to give this information to our pharmacy, too.

I got nothing.

I did let them know that the insurance would be changing soon, but it would not affect today’s visit.

Then I settled in for what I expected to be a long wait.

They took me in early!

While the tech was setting me up, I explained about the broken tooth, and how I’ve had no pain in my lower jaw that they’d been trying to find the source of the last two times I was there, since the piece fell out. She told me she’d heard of how pain can sometimes be in a completely different area before, but never to the extent it did with me! She got an Xray, which was awkward because of how far back the tooth is, but she got enough of an image that the dentist could use it.

When he came in, he joked about how my broken tooth “cured” the pain I was having before! He had tried so many things to find the source of the pain, where I was feeling it! I told him, my mouth was feeling better than it had in ages – except for the sharp bits cutting my cheek and tongue.

He took a look and said that, ultimately, I would need a crown. Which is what I expected. They couldn’t do that today, though. I explained about the insurance change and he considered it, but there was no way they’d be able to get a crown booked in before the end of March. For now, though, he could put in a “temporary” filling.

The entire procedure went very well! The freezing has worn off, so I just have that “healing itch” right now, but that’s it. It is so great to not have those sharp edges!

When it was done, I asked how long I could expect this “temporary” filling to last, and he basically said, years. It’s more an issue of having new pieces of tooth breaking off than the filling itself. Unless something like that happens, or I start to feel pain, I can hold off getting the crown for quite some time.

Well, that was good news!

I felt good enough, and the truck ran well enough, that I decided I was up to visiting my mother. I just wanted to stop at the nearby pharmacy to pick up some Voltaren that she asked me for.

Which is when I started feeling some thumping and thudding at the wheels, as I turned into the parking lot.

Nothing at all like what was happening before, though. Particularly not that big kathump. I pulled into a spot as quickly as I could…

… and found a big chunk of ice had fallen off from under the truck!

The roads may have been melting, but it’s cold enough that any water froze pretty much immediately. My mud flaps were not only full of ice built up to the point of rubbing on the tire, but there were horizontal icicles formed at the bottom edges!

I knocked off as much as I could, though one flap’s build up was so large and solid, I could barely chip away parts of it with the scraper end of my snow brush.

Once I got it clear enough, I finished parking properly!

After I was done at the pharmacy, I headed to my mother’s town, cutting across to a different highway to head south until I reached the road that led straight to my mother’s town on yet a third highway.

I forgot just how bad the highway I took is. It’s not broken up or anything, but it’s a very rough ride. Today, it was also pretty badly covered with ice and packed snow, with melting edges. Which did not help with my paranoia of something breaking down on the truck again!

The cross road to my mother’s town was even worse, when it came to the ice and snow.

The noises didn’t start again until I was turning into the parking lot at the hospital. Just a rubbing noise, mostly.

After parking, I went to look, and just had to take a couple of pictures.

All the wheel wells had big teeth! So many teeth!!!

I spent the next while knocking off ice as much as I could, but there was still that one flap that was too solid and wouldn’t come off. I did park the truck with that side facing the sun, though, so I left it and just hoped the dark surface of the mud flap would warm up enough to start it melting a bit.

Then I headed in to visit with my mother.

It was a pretty good visit. She was happy to see me, though she did immediately start complaining. That included calling her radio – the high end one my brother got her years ago that worked just fine in her apartment, but can’t pick up the stations she wants from inside the hospital – garbage. Another radio had been brought in that was labeled as available for all to use, and she says it works fine, but her radio doesn’t.

Except it does. It just can’t pick up the Polish language station she’d been listening to, back at her old apartment with a special antenna set up.

Then there was the phone. It’s garbage. It’s not working. She can’t use it.

I told her, it’s not garbage. It works fine. It seems she’s been trying to make calls and hasn’t been able to figure it out, but forgets that part of the reason we got it for her is so that we could phone her directly, rather than through the nursing station.

I ended up spending some time with her phone. We’ve given up trying to show her how to use the contacts list, and have told her to just dial a number and press the green button, like she did with her previous phone.

I caught two potential problems.

One is, the phone goes to sleep after a while. Any button can be pushed to wake it up, but if you start to dial without waking it up first, it doesn’t register that first number at all. So we walked through that a bit, and I got her to call my cell phone a few times.

Which is when I discovered she hasn’t been putting the phone to her ear. She has just been staring at the screen with the “connecting…” display.

So I walked her through it a few times, including telling her to actually put the phone to her ear after hitting the green button.

Then she wanted to phone my sister, because it’s Friday, which is a day off for her.

I helped her make the call, though her contacts list, and had to tell her to put the phone to her ear again.

When my sister answered, my mother promptly started basically arguing with her about not visiting. It turns out she expects my sister to come out on both Wednesdays and Fridays. Not Saturday, because they celebrate their church’s version of the Sabbath. I could hear my sister explaining that she’s not going to be able to come out every Friday because that’s her day to get ready for the Sabbath. When my mother brought up that she hadn’t come out on Wednesday, I heard her saying that she had tried to call my mother, several times, but got no answer.

…

My mother seemed a bit confused by that. Then starting saying things about not knowing how to use the phone, and maybe she didn’t have it with her…

She got another reminder to keep the phone with her whenever she leaves her room.

Her call with my sister went on long enough that her supper pills were delivered, and it was getting to the point where I needed to head home. After a while, I had to remind my mother that she needed to take her pills, so they finished the call. I helped her take her pills (the nurse brought the pills, but my mother didn’t have any water to take them with) and we talked for a bit longer before her supper tray was brought to her. So that’s when I said my good byes and headed out.

Checking on the truck, first!

Yes, it was long enough and sunny enough that I was finally able to get that huge chunk of ice off the last mud flap!

I messaged home before I left, letting the family know I was going straight home and requesting some food be ready for me, since I hadn’t had lunch. My mouth was thawed out enough that I could safely eat and not worry about accidentally chewing a hole in a numb cheek (I’ve actually done that in the past!).

The last stretch of highway wasn’t much better, but at least it wasn’t as wet. When I got home, I didn’t have as many new teeth hanging down from my fenders!

After checking and clearing around the wheel wells, though, I spotted a surprise under the front end.

A perfect looking – but very dead – butterfly had fallen out from somewhere under the front end! It looked ready to fly away at any moment!

So very odd.

With how well the truck handled, I think it would be safe to try for our first stock up shop for April, tomorrow. Not a Costco run though. The one essential stop I need to make is a Canadian Tire, as we just ran out of litter pellets, so Costco will wait until next week. This time, we’ll be picking up stuff for our Easter basket, and I want to make a small one for my mother, too.

I’m only slightly more confident about driving the truck to the city.

If it hadn’t been so weird about sometimes working fine – usually when the mechanics were taking it for a test drive – to suddenly needing to be towed again, with so many different things seeming to go wrong all at once, I wouldn’t be this paranoid about it.

It is what it is, though. We play the hand we’re dealt with, and do the best we can!

For now, though, I can honestly say it was a really good day.

The Re-Farmer

Walmart stock up shop: This is what $455 looks like

March 23, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yes!!!!!

We have the truck back, and it’s actually working again!

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This morning the cats had me up early, so I did the outside routine that my daughter has been doing for the last while. This time, she got to sleep in. 😊 We had fog warnings overnight, and it was still a bit foggy in the distance as I went to switch out the garage cam memory card. Heavy fog earlier meant thick frost, of course.

It was already starting to disappear by then, too.

Once the outside stuff was done, one of the first things I needed to do was call the garage to follow up on a text I sent yesterday about the truck. They open at 8am, and I was just about to call them then, when my phone rang.

It was the dental clinic. I was on their cancellation list, and they had a cancellation for 10am this morning. Would I be able to take it?

I had no choice but to turn it down. My appointment is on Friday, though, so it won’t be much longer to wait.

When I called the garage, the owner answered right away. He confirmed for me that they had the part. I asked for an idea of when it would be done, so I knew when to book a cab. He told me, 1pm, but they would call if there was any change. Thankfully, the cab was available (we have a single taxi serving several municipalities) and I messaged him to see if he was available to pick me up at one. I wanted to give the garage all the time they needed to get the job done!

With that confirmed, I wanted to finally do our Walmart stock up shop – almost a month late – after picking up the truck. My younger daughter offered to come with me, which I was happy to have the company.

It was shortly after noon when I texted the garage to let them know I was able to get the cab booked for a 1pm pick up and asked the status of things, making sure to add that they could thoroughly test drive the truck afterward. I also brought up that I wanted to talk about pre-financing and trading in the truck. I got a response that the truck was already good to go!

Such good news.

We got the cab to drive me to a local bank, though, not the garage, so I could take out some cash to pay him. The drive was definitely a bit scary! We had high winds and more blowing snow the closer we got to town, with worse road conditions and poor visibility. The areas that were getting drifted over were also melting at the same time! The taxi is a lot lower to the ground than the truck is (my daughter and I were both struggling to get in and out!), so he had to drive on the wrong side of the road a few times to avoid having issues. Thankfully, there was little traffic.

My daughter and I then walked to the garage from the bank; it’s just a few blocks. The owner wasn’t there, however. There was a woman that I think might have been his wife (I’ve only seen his wife very briefly, and she was bundled up for outside). It turns out the owner had gone home sick. She was expecting me, though, and had the keys ready and waiting. I brought up that I was hoping to talk about pre-financing, so she took some notes and said she would get him to call me tomorrow. Hopefully, he will be feeling better by then.

Thankfully, the work was covered by warranty, so we only had to pick up the keys.

From there, we headed straight south to the smaller city to finally do our stock up shopping. It was straight into the wind, which wasn’t too bad – and the truck was running smooth, solid and quiet. Then we saw a thick fog up ahead, which turned out not to be fog at all.

It was heavy snowfall.

It was still warm enough that the snow melted as soon as it touched the truck or the road!

By the time we go to the Walmart, though, we’d driven through the system and it was barely snowing at all as we went in. It was past 2 by then and neither of us had had lunch, so we stopped at the McRaunchies (just over $30 for the two of us!). There was something my daughter was after in their electronics department, but the Walmart no longer carried it. After we ate, she popped across the parking lot (slowly, because she’s still caning it) to a Staples to see if they had it, then met up with me later. The store is being completely renovated and everything has been moved around, so it took a bit longer to find everything. My daughter had a few items of her own to pick up and went through the self check out, so what’s pictured below is just the general shopping.

This is what $455.52 looks like.

Yes, it looks stuffed, and there’s more on the bottom, too, but it’s mostly large cat supplies taking up space.

Here is what we got today.

For the cats, there are three bags of kibble – two for the outside cats, one for the inside cats – and a spare case of canned cat food, as well as a package of XXL pee pads.

In other non-food items, there’s a package of paper towels, a package of incontinence pads, 4 jugs of distilled water, some magnesium complex supplements and some ibuprofen for the girls (I can’t use ibuprofen with the anti-inflammatories I’m taking). For drinks, there’s a 12 pack of Coke Zero, some English Breakfast tea and Double Bergamot Early Grey tea.

In produce, they had five pound bags of potatoes at only $1.97 (usually, they’re closer to $8, locally) each, so we got two. We also got a bag of carrots. I was thinking to pick up some fruit, but nothing looked good. I was also looking to get more flour, but they were almost $20 for the larger bag we usually get! I saw that size at under $10 the last time we were at Costco, so we’ll get more flour there.

For protein, I got some pink salmon fillets for the girls, a 24 pack of hot dog wieners, some frozen chicken strips and a package of breakfast sausages.

In the “quick, heat and eat” category – because we all need a break right now – I also got a big bag of frozen tater tots.

Then there’s a flat of eggs, 2L of milk, and four pounds of butter. The butter was only $4.97 each, which is better than Costco, so I made sure to get extra.

I also saw cake mixes and icing going for only $1.87, so I got a box of chocolate cake and chocolate icing. There’s also a jar of sandwich pickles that was only $2.77, and penne pasta bags for only $1.97. Both much better prices than I’ve seen in a while. Plus there is a jar of mayo and a bag of popcorn.

For bread, we got two 12 packs of hot dog buns and three loaves of rye bread.

Then we have some treats. My husband requested some Sour Patch candies, so there are two bags of those. At $10.77 each, they are almost $2 less than local prices. We also got a total of five bags of chips; I picked for myself and my husband while my daughter picked for herself and her sister.

For the drive home, I got a package of lightly salted pistachios – the price had dropped to $6.97, while locally they are approaching $13 for the same size bag. For my daughter, we got a package of Teriyaki beef jerky.

And that’s all of it.

The cat supplies make up the biggest part of the bill.

By the time I was checked out, my daughter was already at the truck so she could put her own purchases into a bag – we never bother to bring any in with us, partly because I never know how many we would actually end up needing. It took a while to pack everything and load the back of the truck, then start heading home.

With the weather we had, I knew the road we usually cross over to take a different highway would be in rough shape, so we took the same highway that would take us back to town before turning for home. With gas at $1.729/L, that would give me the chance to go to a Shell station, where my CAA card gets me a discount on gas.

This route is slower, because we got through a series of small towns along the lake. I’m glad we did, though, because I sure didn’t mind having to slow down. We updated the family before we started heading out, and my husband informed us that it had started to snow at home. Where we were, however, it was raining!

Then the rain turned to snow.

Yeah, we drove right back into storm conditions again.

By the time we cleared all the little towns and onto open highway again, we pretty much drove right through it. We stopped for gas and also picked up some Monster energy drinks. The Walmart had next to none and… well, my CAA card gives me a discount on those, too.

From there it was straight home. All the areas we’d driven through in the cab, where things were drifting over, wet and slushy, were all melted away! It was clear driving, for the most part.

The truck behaved.

Talking with my daughter about it, I told her how, with so many things breaking down, and how the truck had been working, then not working, then working again, seeing how well it was running didn’t actually make me feel better. Driving it was like having the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. What weird thing will go wrong next?

The truck is now named Damocles.

One thing felt really strange while driving home, and that was realizing it was past 5pm, and it was bright and sunny out! We were both feeling like it should be full dark at 4:30. Part of that is because there’s still so much snow. The municipality has the back hoe out, though. They’re starting to clear snow out of the ditches, to prevent ice dams and flooding once things really start to melt. The ditches slope to drain to the lake, and if they’re not clear the snowmelt can take out the highway in no time.

It was so nice out that, after unloading the truck and feeding the outside cats, I stayed out to try and do a bit of shoveling. I’d driven up to the house without turning the truck around first, because I hadn’t cleared the area behind the garage completely yet. With everything so soft and melting, I knew the truck would start sinking and spinning, and I really didn’t want to test the new differential that much, yet! I didn’t even need to wear a coat, it was so nice out.

My brother’s truck is still pulled as far into the garage as it can go. There is no way I can maneuver it back into the spot my brother had it parked before, so for now, our truck will stay parked in the yard.

The cats were all over it, of course. I’m going to have to be very careful when we had to take it out again!

I wasn’t able to completely clear the turn around space, but I think it should be okay now. I didn’t want to push myself too much and reinjure my right arm, which is still not really recovered.

So there we are.

We have our truck back. It’s behaving well. We finally got our Walmart stock up trip done. We would do our usual stock up shopping this coming weekend and I plan to do that as normal, with both the Costco trip and the Walmart/Canadian Tire and maybe the international grocery store run.

I’m so glad that we try to maintain a decent amount of supplies at all times. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to rely on them. Now, it’s time to replenish. Having enough for at least a month is not just “prepping”. It’s prudent planning!

Just in case Damocles drops his sword. Again.

The Re-Farmer

It begins

March 22, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, sort of. More like a tease.

Today’s expected high is -1C/30F, which we’re supposed to hit later this afternoon. It’s bright and sunny, though, and feels a lot warmer.

It was -12C/10F when my daughter did the morning cat feeding.

While doing the second feeding of the day and a few other things around the yard, I found myself needing to skirt around this.

There it is. The tease.

As the snow melts, this area becomes a bit of a pond. Some years, it’s part of a moat that encircles the garage and floods the pit under the outhouse.

For now, though, it’s a tease. Tomorrow we’re supposed to have a high above freezing, and then the highs are going to be dipping again. We won’t get highs above freezing again for about a week. Everything that’s melting now is going to be ice.

Ah, March. You’re just nasty.

Not a lot to say about today. It has been a bad pain day, of the sort that keeps me from standing in one place for very long. I can walk around, sit, lie down, but I can’t stand for more than a few minutes.

Even so, I’m still the most able bodied person in the household.

That’s rather scary to think of.

My brother had messaged me, saying he was planning to visit our mother and asked if I wanted to meet him there. I told him I wasn’t feeling well today. Which worked out, in a way, as he spent time helping my mother figure out her phone. She hasn’t been able to make outgoing calls. She keeps trying to use the programmed numbers and just not getting that she only needs to see the name on the screen, then hit the green button. In the end, he told her to just direct dial, like she always has before. They tested it out by calling here, so I was answering the phone quite a few times.

I later found out that my brother crossed paths with our vandal and his wife. They were going to visit my mother and happened to get to the doors to the TCU (which require a code to get in) at the same time my brother did. My brother, trying to be polite, asked how our vandal was doing, all things considered. His answer? “I’m dying.” … okay. He then said he wanted to talk to our mother alone. !!! There was an uncomfortable moment before his wife said they would come back later.

As my brother was leaving, about an hour later, he found them still hanging out not far from the TCU doors.

I really wish there were some way we could keep them away from my mother; he obviously is after something. The staff have been warned, but there’s really little they can do, since we don’t have any sort of court order.

What we do know is that he’s been telling my mother about things like his funeral already being planned out and paid for. It makes us wonder if he applied for and was accepted for MAiD, which is currently the 5th highest cause of death in Canada. My mother would not approve, of course, since it goes against our religious beliefs. It’s one thing to allow death to happen as peacefully and painlessly as possible, and deliberately killing someone. It’s not our business, except we worry about what he is say to Mom. She should not be burdened with his health problems. Lord knows, if my current issues turn out to be cervical cancer or something, I would NOT be telling my mother anything other than “I’m not feeling well”, unless I absolutely have to – and even then, I’d be telling her as little as possible. She does not need that burden, and she can’t handle that sort of thing at the best of times. Which leads me back to wondering, what is it he’s trying to guilt her into doing for/giving him, and why is his wife helping him do it? With all the threats of some sort of retribution he’s made against me and my brother, and claiming we caused his cancer, it frustrates me that he’s working his way into my mother’s good graces again so easily.

That’s one of the frustrating things about him. We’ve learned that when things are quiet from him, it has generally meant that he’s been doing things in the background that he springs on us, later on. I would have hoped that, when facing his own mortality like this, he would have tried to give up all that toxic stuff, but he has instead doubled down and gotten worse.

Well, if he is, I guess we’ll find out eventually.

It does make me glad I wasn’t up to going over there today. He’s been trying to wheedle himself into my brother’s … trust? … to turn him against me. If I were there at the same time, who knows how he would have reacted, or how he would end up treating my mother, after we left.

What a thing to have to even think about.

The Re-Farmer

Open fire cooking

March 15, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

After all the digging yesterday, today we got to enjoy the fruit of my labour with a cookout.

March is a birthday month, but we never celebrate birthdays on the day, but the weekend before or after (unless the birthday happens to fall on a weekend, of course), plus like to do nice things for the birthday person spread out over a couple of weeks.

The other thing we normally used to do was take the birthday person out to the restaurant of their choice. Which isn’t really an option anymore. So instead, we would do the take out of their choice.

Now, in theory, we could have done that this time. My brother got his truck prepped and it’s available for us to drive, should we need it. He is also convinced something is going to go wrong with our own truck! It is a much older truck – I don’t know the year, but I think it’s either late 70’s or early ’80’s. With my luck, I’m afraid that if I drive it, it’ll break down, too! 😄

My older daughter that has a birthday this month, however, insisted we not spend any money on her for her birthday. When I told her, I budgeted for it, she said to put it towards the truck.

*sigh*

So, instead, I decided to do special meals. Today, it was a cookout.

The cooking was done outside, but the eating inside, because dang, it’s still cold out there!

My younger daughter headed out early to get the fire pit going and build up coals for cooking, while I brought out the stuff to cook. This was our first time using our square Dutch oven that I got on clearance at Canadian Tire, months ago.

I had eight baking potatoes, wrapped in foil with olive oil and course salt. They all fit quite nicely in the Dutch oven, as you can see in the second picture.

I got the pictures after she’d had it in the middle of the fire pit for more than an hour (we forgot to check the time), then moved it off to one side to start cooling it down a bit.

The nice things about this Dutch oven. The square shape made fitting the potatoes in much better than with a round shape, which made for more even cooking. As with the other Dutch oven, the lid can double as a separate cooking surface. It’s smaller, and lighter, perfect for if we want to cook smaller portions, and easier to carry when full.

The down sides with this design. It has no legs, so it rests directly in the coals. The lid isn’t recessed, so any coals set on top are not as secure. It’s handles are built in; larger areas on opposite corners, rather than a wire carrying handle that swings up and down, or can even be used to hang it over the fire. There is also no handle on the lid. Which means we can’t use a tool to lift the lid off, nor use a carrying handle to lift the entire thing in and out of the fire pit. Instead, we had to wait for things to cool down enough to handle in some way. My daughter was able to push the lid off to the side so I could remove the potatoes and take them into the house to stay warm in the oven. Eventually, my daughter was able to get the lid out so finish cooling off on the side, but it took quite a bit longer before the rest was cool enough to remove with oven mitts. Even then, it had to rest on top of some logs (so as not to come in directly contact with the snow) until it was cool enough to handle and bring inside.

Then my daughter reset the fire and built up more coals to cook the hot dog wieners. We have a moveable grill surface (you can see the shadow of it in the first picture above) and a cooking tray designed to go on a BBQ grill, for things that would otherwise fall through the grill. It fits a dozen wieners at once.

Wieners that had started to freeze by then!

With the temperatures, once those were on, we had to cover them with foil. I had a metal dish to bring them into the house with, later; with the wind, I ended up setting it on top to keep the foil from blowing off!

When it was time to turn them, though, I realized I forgot something important.

I forgot to oil the cooking surface. The wieners were stilling to it!

As soon as they were cooked through enough, my daughter transferred them into the (now warm) metal dish. They were pretty torn up, but she did the best she cook! I wrapped the dish in foil and went in to keep them warm with the potatoes. Originally, we were going to toast the hot dog buns, too, but quickly gave up on that idea. We would toast them in the oven, so I took the bag of buns in, too.

They were starting to freeze as well!

In the end, though, it all worked out well. The potatoes turned out to be perfectly cooked! I was more concerned about them. The last time we did foil wrapped potatoes in the fire pit, they were set directly into the hot ashes. They cooked way faster than expected, and were pretty burned in places. Cooking them in the Dutch oven protected them and let them cook more evenly. Definitely something worth doing again!

That was for today. Later on, we’ll be baking a cake, and I’ve got fish fillets thawing out for another special dinner – one only my daughters can eat, but that’s just fine! My husband and I don’t tolerate fish – or most seafood in general – well. The girls, on the other hand, love pretty much all seafood.

As for me, it’s back to spending time with the family! It’s been a good day.

I hope you are having a wonderful day, too!

The Re-Farmer

Some news

March 11, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness.

Kinda creepy cuteness, though…

Beep Beep and Susan in a cuddle puddle.

That eye, though… it wasn’t blinking. Just… staring like that…

👁️👁️

Anyhow…

I got some news from the garage today. They think that they got a bad differential, and are now working to get me a new one, on warranty. Which makes sense, since that shaking and shuddering started right after it was installed. The weird electrical stuff is probably unrelated, but who knows, with this truck!

No time line yet, though. They are closed now, but I hope to get some info tomorrow. We need to at least a small grocery shopping trip for the fresh stuff, plus a trip to the mail.

At least my husband’s prescription refills will get delivered as usual, tomorrow!

Hopefully, we will get the truck back soon. It might be nice to stay home, but not to much when it’s not a matter of choice. Having zero transportation a real problem.

The frustrating thing is to get lectures and “advice” from my mother, and even my sister, though through conversations with my mother. With my mother, she can’t understand vehicle stuff, so I don’t bother telling her details. That doesn’t stop her from deciding she knows everything and can start telling me what I should be doing. Even just telling her, we don’t know what the problem is, and the garage is having a hard time finding it, her response was to say, “can’t they find someone who can?” or “… someone who knows what they are doing?” As if hopping from garage to garage will find someone who can magically know exactly what’s going on, instantly. Then telling me to get a new truck, buy the truck from my BIL (who isn’t planning to sell it until he can replace it, in the summer), oh, and maybe I could make payments! Uhm… Mom. I’m already making payments. We’d have to get re-financing. To which I was told, I should talk to my brother. He’ll take care of it for me.

…

I told her, I wouldn’t be talking to my brother. I’d be talking to a financing company.

“Oh…”

She also started telling me about a conversation with my sister, and how she was saying that what we need is a second vehicle.

Yeah. We do. But we can’t afford insurance on two vehicles, while also making payments. We certainly can’t afford to be making payments on two vehicles at the same time!

Then my mother told me that my sister should lend us one of their vehicles.

…

I said no, they can’t. My sister uses the car to go to work. My BIL uses the truck. I also told her, I don’t want to be getting anyone else involved in this. I’m talking to my brother about things, and I’m talking to the garage about our options, and that’s it. No one else needs to be part of it.

I don’t know if she got it or not.

Ah, well.

As an aside, I’m happy to say that my mother has been making sure to have her new phone with her at all times, wearing it on a lanyard around her neck. We’ll have to walk her through how to make calls again. She apparently tried to phone us – I think on our land line – but said there was nothing; our phone wasn’t working. Except, of course, it was. She also tried to call my brother and that didn’t work. So she manually dialed a number and got my SIL. She thought she was calling my brother’s cell phone number, but called my SILs cell phone number, instead. We didn’t even know my mother had my SIL’s cell phone number! She was just as surprised as we were. It’s not like the numbers are at all similar.

My siblings and I have been able to reach her, though, and not have to go through the nursing station, which we are all happy about. Strangely, for me, it was a long distance call, and it shouldn’t have been, so my brother will be looking into that.

So the new phone is working out for my mother, even if she’s going to need more help in how to make outgoing calls. She said she asked someone at the nursing station to help her, and they refused, which is odd. I’m sure we’ll get the rest of the story later on.

Hopefully, we’ll soon have our truck back and working properly again, and I’ll be able to visit her again and help her figure things out.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Better than expected!

March 8, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness!

I wasn’t fast enough in getting the picture I wanted. Ghosty and Tin Whistle were snuggled cheek to cheek and looking so absolutely adorable.

They still look adorable, of course.

This morning, I got a pleasant offer from my brother. He was planning to visit our mother today, and wanted to know if I wanted to go along. Since our truck is in the shop again, that meant extra driving to pick me up, then drop me off later. Of course, I accepted, since I have no way of knowing when we’ll get the truck back and I can visit her again.

It was a bonus for him, too. He got here earlier than he’s been able to in ages, which meant he had daylight to check on a few of their things and get some stuff done before we headed out. It was so warm today, I headed out early so I could scrap the sidewalk clear and get a few other things done outside. We hit 3C/37F, and I was absolutely overheating!

An unexpected extra reason for a joint visit popped up. I had talked to my brother about the check my mother gave me, to help with truck repairs. I wanted to be sure she would be okay before I tried to deposit it. He told me that it was fine and to deposit it as soon as possible. So I went to do a mobile deposit.

It didn’t work.

It turned out that when my mother tore the check out off the check book at the perforated line, a tiny piece of the check tore off. It had a bit of the account information on it. Not even a number, but part of the lines and bars around the numbers. So I was going to return it to her, voided, and – if she were still willing – we would help her write a new one.

My brother goes over my mother’s finances with her, regularly, and he was prepared to do that with her today, but he also had her new phone.

Yes, my 94 year old mother now has her own cell phone!

He chose one of the ones we were looking at on Amazon, and it arrived about a week ago. He also ordered a SIM card, but that never showed up. He ended up going to the phone company and, thanks to a deal he could get through his employer, he was also able to get a Senior’s plan for her, at a discount. The batteries were charged, with numbers pre-programmed, and it was ready to go. While we were driving, he had me get it out to test it by calling his cell phone. Which only worked once, because we kept losing signal. There are several cell phone dead zones just like we have at our place, all along this highway, even much closer to the city. Frustrating!

When we got to the TCU, my mother was in the common room with the same guy she’d introduced me to before, working on a jigsaw puzzle again. My mother introduced my brother and I to him and he volunteered to leave for a while, so we could have some privacy. Which was very kind of him.

Once settled in, my brother asked if she remembered about getting her her own phone. She did, so the next while was spent showing her the phone, the charging port, and showing her how to use it. The phone can actually do quite a lot, but all we could focus on was for her to be able to make and receive calls. Because of her vision declining, he made sure the phone he got did things like voice the numbers as she dialed them. The buttons are large enough that she had only minor issues in hitting the right ones. He showed her how to use the contacts list and got her to call my cell phone, then to manually dial to call our landline at the farm – I made sure to message the family that they were about to get a test call! Then, as a way to give our sister my mother’s new phone number, we got her to manually call my sister, too. I thought we might not get her, as she would normally have been at work, but it turned out she had called in sick and was able to answer. My mother could barely recognize her voice, with the cold she had!

There was a fair bit of confusion for my mother, but we managed to keep it low key so that she did not get completely overwhelmed. After a while, we went back to her room so the charging cradle could be set up next to her bed. We talked about how she should keep the phone with her, then set it on the cradle at night, or if she’s napping. I suggested I could make her a phone pouch so she could wear it around her neck. My brother, the excellent planner that he is, had already picked up a lanyard long enough, so now my mother can always have her phone on her.

My mother did start to worry about “what if’s”, and being able to call out on her own. We told her that even if she has issues, we can now phone her directly, and not have to go through the nursing station and get transferred to a cordless phone. That made her very happy. Then she was worried about knowing her own phone number. My brother had it hand written down for her, on the large print instructions he’d printed out for her so she could read it more easily. She had trouble reading the number, but not because of her vision. It was because it wasn’t written out the way it was “supposed” to be. Mostly with the 7’s. Sevens must have a line across them. Without that, she couldn’t tell the difference between a 7 and a 1, she said. Which didn’t make much sense under the circumstances, but it was a simple matter to just add the marks she insisted the numbers had to have! In the end, she was quite happy with the phone, which was a huge relief.

Next, my brother went over her finances with her. That is it’s own challenge, as she has trouble understanding some things, and kept asking about things he just didn’t get a chance to get to, yet. He kept having to back her up to go over things he needed to show her first. Some of it involved having to explain why her “rent” is so high – it includes her meals, medications, etc. Everything they do for her. The check she wrote to our vandal was in the list on his printouts for her, and he took the time to explain to her that she had to be very careful writing large checks like that, or she won’t have enough to pay her accommodation charges.

Which was a good time to return her check to me, for the truck repairs. We explained what happened, and made sure to void it out in front of her, and my brother kept it for her files. After seeing her numbers, I was much more comfortable accepting the money. Once she understood what the problem was, she was quick to send me to get her purse for a replacement check. I wrote it out for her, she signed it, then my brother stopped her from tearing the check out, so he could very carefully do it for her – after clearing the remaining bit of the first check she wrote to me, still attached to the checkbook!

There were a few other things we needed to talk to her about. One of them, my brother had brought up during the drive out. He had needed her photo ID in order to do some things on her behalf, and he told me she only had her citizenship card. Which made no sense to me at all! I knew that, when she turned in her driver’s license, years ago, she immediately went through the process of getting a photo ID instead. The photo IDs look almost identical to the driver’s licenses. I’ve seen it. I knew she had it. But when my brother asked for her ID to use for some of things he was doing for her, she showed him the citizenship card.

So we asked her about that, and she brought out her citizenship card again. It’s a modern, laminated plastic card, but her photo on it is many decades old! My mother made a big deal about how important this card was, but didn’t understand that it was pretty much useless as an ID, if only because her picture on it is so old.

Her photo ID, it turned out, was hidden behind the citizenship card. I got it out and my brother took pictures of it, as the bank was going to need it. It took a while before I could put it back, because my mother had the holder and kept going on about her citizenship card and how important it was, looking at it, taking it out, putting it back in. Eventually, we were able to get the photo ID back in the holder, making sure that it was visible.

Which is when a thought struck me, and I took a closer look.

It expired three years ago. She needs a new one!

This would be beyond my mother right now, but my brother is going to see what he can do to get her a new one. It’s got the wrong address on it, anyhow, but what could we use as an address now? She’s not going to be living here permanently!

My brother said he would figure it out. The main thing is, he got pictures of it and can use it for what’s needed, now.

The necessary things done with, we got to just plain visit for a while. My mother had asked me to bring a cross for her, which I did, and it’s now hanging on the wall where she can see it from her bed. There were hooks already there that I could use. Her room mate had company, one of whom brought two big, very chill, very well behaved dogs. My mother wasn’t happy about that, but she hates having dogs and cats indoors at the best of times. It wasn’t an issue, though, since we were going back to the common room. Before her guests arrived, though, my mother’s room mate was walking back and forth with her walker in the hallway. My mother was absolutely convinced that she was doing it to listen in on our conversation.

Overall, the entire visit went way better than expected. My brother was really worried Mom would lose it over the phone. That’s her typical response when he gets things for her, no matter how much she actually needs it. The last time I saw her, she would go on about how we needed to get her out of there and would start crying off and on. This time, she still had some complaints, but actually seemed to be in a good mood. She was happy that her friend from church had come to give her Communion, like he used to while she was still in her apartment. At my mother’s request, he will arrange with the priest to come and hear her confession before Easter, so she was happy about that, too.

We were able to stay for quite a while, but my brother checked the weather and realized we needed to head out. There was a storm on the way, and he still had to drive me home, first. The storm won’t hit us, though we’re expecting to get snow overnight, but it’s supposed to pass right over where my brother lives.

He messaged me to let me know when he got safely home, just as the snow was kicking in. Good timing!

As he dropped me off at the gate, he mentioned that we need a people gate. I told him, we were planning to make one, and I told him about my plans to make an arbor to make it look pretty, to have plants growing on it, and about where I was intending to set it up. It turned out we are very much on the same page about this, and he suggested it’s a project we can work on this summer.

Now that they no longer have their own acreage, and all his equipment is out here, we will finally be able to get some things done! He’s planning to set up an office in their mobile home, so he can stay out here, work from home, then work on things out here in the evenings.

Knowing him, I expect to have to struggle to keep up! I also expect we will learn a lot from him, and I really look forward to finally being able to get things done. There was so much we expected to be able to do when we moved out here, and had this whole 5 year plan. So much of it went out the window. We knew it would be a lot, but none of us realized just how bad things had gotten, and how many of the tools and equipment our vandal had taken.

This summer is going to be very, very different, that’s for sure!

Right now, though, I’m just focused on getting through this winter, and hopefully having reliable transportation soon!

Meanwhile, we were both really happy with our visit with Mom today. She seemed to be so much better today, and I think having both of us there at the same time really helped with that. She even got to talk to my sister on her new phone, and seemed quite delighted that she could do it!

All in all, it’s been a very good day.

The Re-Farmer

Here we go again… again

March 7, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Funny how things can go so wrong – yet go so right, at the same time!

First off, I am seriously glad I cancelled both my own doctor’s appointment, yesterday, and my daughter’s on Monday, because of concerns about road conditions.

Second, it’s amazing how there were the right people available at the right time, and even the right places.

The truck just got towed to the garage again.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my first warning of a problem was while backing out of the garage, to load it for a dump run. I wasn’t going to drive up to the house, but I at least wanted to back up closer to the cleared path to the chain link fence. As I was backing up, the truck basically stopped moving. I knew there was a snow bank I needed to clear and I thought I might have backed into it. I tried to get out in 2 wheel drive at first, then switch to 4 wheel drive, but eventually was able to pull forward while in 2 wheel drive and didn’t try backing up again. As I went to the house, though, I could see by the tracks that I never got anywhere near the snow bank. It was just loose snow over ice, and no traction.

My daughter and I loaded up the truck, and then I headed out. Things were really slippery on the gravel road, but once I was on the highway, it was fine.

It was slippery on the gravel road to the dump, but not too bad. I drove up to the booth to show my access card number, but there was no one there. The guy was at the pit area, using a front end loader to clear up the driving area in front. So I went to the recycling bins first and unloaded there, before heading to the pit. I did notice, every time I tried to move, everything was very slippery and the tires were spinning more than usual before I could get traction.

At the pit, I drove further in, to where it was already cleared, then turned to one side, so that I could back up to the pit and unload.

I got stuck.

Tires spinning, no motion.

I tried a few times in 2 wheel drive, then drive both 4 wheel drive settings. I could move forward slightly, but no traction in reverse.

At one point, the guy with the front end loader passed in front of me, clearing way more snow. I hoped that would help, but it didn’t.

After a while, he came out to talk to me. He made a comment about this being a problem with 2 wheel drive. I told him, I’m in 4 wheel drive! He said that only my rear wheels were turning, not the front wheels. !!!

I tried again, setting it to 2 wheel drive, and the front tires started to spin – but now I started getting messages on my dash. Stabilizers Off. Then Service 4 Wheel Drive.

The truck was not moving.

The guy then said he would try to find some cardboard or drywall or something to put behind the tires. I got my handy garden cultivator that we keep in the truck as a grabber, and used it to scratch up the ice behind each tire.

He found some drywall pieces and set them behind the tires, then suggested something to me, assuring me that he’s done it before, and would be safe. He said that he could try standing on the tail gate and bouncing the truck up and down while I reversed, so help it gain traction. So we did that, and it worked! Once I got far enough out, the tires were no longer spinning and I could back up normally.

He then helped me unload the garbage bags. When it was done, he said he would follow me out to make sure I got out okay.

So awesome!

Once I got on the gravel road, though, I could feel the truck starting to fishtail, and I kept having to slow down. The “slippery conditions” light was on continuously. By the time I got to the stop sign and started braking to stop, I started getting
“stabilizer is off” and “traction is off” messages. As slow as I was going, the truck fishtailed to a stop.

Once on the highway and starting to accelerate, it started again.

That shuddering that, until now, only happened while in 4 wheel drive or auto.

I quickly pulled over. After putting it in park, I thought I would just try again and started to move forward again, but the shuddering immediately started.

So I parked, turned on my hazards and got to work.

*This is what WordPress AI thinks my truck looks like. No rust. 😄*

First was to try and message the family but, for some reason, my phone hasn’t been able to send messages while on data only. So I phoned home and left a message (I knew no one would be close enough to get to the phone before the answering machine kicked in). Then I called CAA.

Thankfully, this time, after going through the initial answering system, it went straight to a live person. The only difficulty there was, they need a physical address. I was on the side of the highway. There was, however, a driveway a short distance away, so I walked over until I could read their driveway marker number. I knew the tow truck drive would be able to find us, but CAA needed a physical address.

That done, I tried to message my brother and his wife, but it wouldn’t send. After some searching in my phone, I found a setting that, for some reason, was off, so my phone was trying to connect to the internet through my phone’s web browser, instead of through a data signal. I’ve never seen this setting before, so this must have been part of the latest OS update.

That done, I could finally send messages, and even look at the CAA map to follow the driver. Not that I was going to use it much, since it’s all open highway. I would be able to see the tow truck from a mile or more away.

Then it was time to wait.

I even had a couple of vehicles slow down beside me to check if I was okay, which was really nice.

I did get a call from the tow truck driver as soon as he got the CAA notice. We talked about my exact location, which side of the highway I was on, etc. He then asked if I would be riding in with him. That was when I asked about the possibility of getting a ride home. He would have to go past the turn to our place anyhow, and we were only 2 miles out of the way.

Also, just one mile past his sister’s place, at the large animal rescue. So he had no problem knowing where I was, and agreed to drive me home along the way.

Which is so extra appreciated, as it turns out my brother wouldn’t have been able to come out – they were on their way to an event in another town – and my sister and her husband might not have been able to, because today is the Sabbath, and their “church” is pretty strict about that sort of thing. Helping me out might have been okay, though. Still, it would have been at least an hour for them to reach me, or they would have to meet me at the garage. Which closes at 1pm on Saturdays.

So that was something else that fell into place.

While we were driving, I told the driver about what happened and what warnings I was seeing. I had left a message on the company phone, but I was able to give him more details this way.

He asked questions about the mileage and stuff, and I told him a bit about the many very odd and unpredictable problems we’ve been having, as well as how this shuddering thing would come and go, and they could never find the cause. It would work fine while they were testing it. He laughed about that part, because he understood completely. He has that happen with his own vehicles! He even brought up that, for the potential cost, first for how much time it might take to find the problem, then the repairs themselves, it might be better to trade it in. I told him that I’ve already been talking to his brother about that, but we still have almost 3 years of payments on it. He assured me, his brother would be able to help us (he even mentioned that, for regular customers, he can do payment arrangements for work done). I brought up that we (my brother and I) have been talking about including my mother’s car as a trade in, but it was suggested we could get a better price by selling it ourselves. I said that’s not something I would feel up to doing, but my brother suggested we could sell it on consignment.

It turns out, our mechanic does sell on consignment!! Plus, we could probably do better that way, since it would be highly visible on the lot.

Something to work out. I co-own my mother’s car, as I needed at least partial ownership to be able to register and insure it. My brother was able to arrange that, as my mother’s PoA. If we do work out something to sell it, it might be easier for him to make me full owner, so he wouldn’t have to come out and sign things on my mother’s behalf.

But I’m getting ahead of myself on that.

Oh, and I did get complimented on the fact that I understood the risks of buying a high mileage vehicle. He said that he’s had quite a few people he’s towed that got high mileage vehicles, then would be really angry and upset because things were wearing out and breaking down. I told him, we knew the risks, but it was what we could afford – and his brother really went above and beyond to help us with the financing (I’m still convinced he sold it to us at a loss). I actually love the truck. It’s the vehicle we need, but all these weird break downs are just too expensive on a fixed income. I told him about some of our past experiences with the high mileage Uplander we had previously, which did remarkably well for us until we finally sold it for scrap. I then mentioned, the vehicle I liked the most was the Dodge Caravan. He perked right up on that. He said that the Caravan is one of the safest vehicles. He told me he’s rolled a bunch of them for the fire department, and has had one roll 10 times, and still not be crushed. !!!

How does one even get a job like that? 😄

As we were driving down the gravel road to our place, I suggested to him that he could drop me off in the intersection, rather than go to our driveway. With the walls of snow, the driveway is pretty tight for such a large vehicle, and he wouldn’t have room to turn around. He appreciated that! Once he got the tow truck turned around, it also gave him a chance to double check the straps securing the truck before he headed to the garage, and I walked the rest of the way home.

As much of a pain this break down is, it couldn’t have happened better.

I had been thinking of doing our Walmart and Canadian Tire run after my medical appointment, yesterday. Because I cancelled that, due to the weather, we didn’t have this happen while we were much, much further from home. Instead, it was only about 10-15 minutes from home.

We did get our Costco stock up shop done. We got the cat food donation. I got our lysine picked up from the feed store. We are good for some time. I even managed to get the dump run done before the break down. Yes, we still need to do our Walmart and Canadian Tire run, but neither of those are urgent. More importantly, I got a visit in with my mother.

I’d already cancelled my daughter’s medical appointment on Monday, just in case, so we won’t be needing to phone to cancel on the day of the appointment.

There was the guy at the dump, able to help me out.

Our regular garage now does CAA towing, and the driver is our mechanic’s brother, so not only do they know the area and could find me where I was, but I knew that anything I told him about what was going on would actually get to our mechanic. Plus, he was able to give me more information and assurances about other things, like that we might be able to get my mother’s car sold on consignment through the garage.

In the end, I have many blessings to count. For something that went wrong, it couldn’t possibly have gone more right in the process.

The Re-Farmer

Finally got a visit in

March 5, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yes, I finally made it to visit my mother at the new TCU today! The truck even behaved normally the whole time. 😄

But first, the cuteness!

I got home late enough to do the evening feeding, and couldn’t resist getting a picture of this fluffy beauty.

Zoomed in from a distance, because she? he? is pretty feral and none of us have been able to get close. It does come into the sun room to snuggle with other cats and eat, so that’s encouraging, at least.

I headed out to visit my mother shortly past noon. I made sure to check on the truck before hand, and the clock still showed the right time, and even the door chime dinged appropriately, so whatever gremlin we’ve got in the electrical seems to be napping.

While today was warmer, we’ve been having intermittent snow and “snow showers” throughout the day. The highway was good, though, and while visibility was reduced, it wasn’t by much – at least not while I was on the road.

When I got to the hospital, I went into the wing I thought my mother was in, but it turns out the TCU was in a completely different wing. I did get to see what the long term car section looked like, though. While at the nursing station, looking for someone, I saw a lot of seniors all over, and several of them demanded to know why I was there and what I wanted! Thankfully, a staff member (a janitor, I think) showed up. I told her who I was there to see, and she knew my mother’s name, then led me through the hospital to the wing my mother was in.

I’d brought some stuff my mother requested, including more Pepto. There was someone at the nursing station, and I was able to leave it with her.

I also had a chance to ask about the photos my brother left of our vandal and my sister. Our vandal has visited a couple of times already, and my mother’s been there for just over a week. I was able to let her know that the last time he was there, he ended up with a check for a substantial amount. This is one of the issues with him; he’s managed to get many thousands of dollars our of my mother over the years. In this case, the check was written out by his wife for my mother to sign. I made sure to say, this was just so they know it happened, not that I was trying to blame anyone. Knowing my mother, she probably didn’t need a lot of persuasion and may well has suggested it herself.

The nurse I spoke to took some notes about it, so other stiff will be aware. I also talked a bit about my sister, as they would have her photo, too. I explained that with her, it’s more that both our vandal and my mother can manipulate her so easily. She has caused problems by going along with them when she should have said no.

Then I had to ask which room my mother was in. I had it in one of my family group messages, but couldn’t get a connection to look it up. It turned out I wasn’t even able to send updates to my family, either.

The nurse told me where to go, and I soon found my mother. She has the bed against the window, but her room mate had her curtain completely closed, so I wasn’t interrupting anyone else.

The visit was… difficult.

We started to talk, but there was some banging going on down the hall. I starting going through the bag of things I’d brought for her, but she was very disturbed. She moved to sit in a chair and started to tell me where to put things, then started to cry (it may even have been partially genuine) and complain about it, saying I had to get her out of there. She brought up the banging, and thought her room mate was doing it. !! I said no, there’s some sort of construction or repairs happening. My mother said we could go to somewhere more private and let me to the common room.

Which was directly across the hall from the banging.

At the time, a workman was using a chisel on the edge of a door for what turned out to be the installation of a keypad locking assembly.

The common room clearly had been a hospital room in the past and wasn’t particularly big, but it was in the corner of the wing, so it had two big windows and lots of light. Someone in a wheelchair was at a table working on a jigsaw puzzle. My mother introduced us. She has her own favourite armchair, right in the corner between the two windows, with a hospital bed table. She told me she eats her meals there.

We started talking and she kept telling me how terrible things where and how much she wanted to get out of there. She made it sound like the banging was happening all the time (the work on the door would have started just today), and talking. Apparently, her room mate sleeps all day and talks to herself all night. Which is curious, since both my brother and my sister have said they’ve talked to her during their daytime visits and found her very nice. After a while, the guy working on the puzzle started to leave, and my mother thanked him for the privacy.

As we talked for the next while, my mother was all over the place. She went from complaining about the noise and how she has all this money, but is stuck living there (I told her, everyone else there is in the same situation as her, regardless of money), to talking about how my sister should visit more often (she’s visited my mother twice in the first week), and even complained about my brother and his wife giving her an Easter card. Now. A month ahead of Easter, so that means they’re not planning to visit her on Easter. I reminded her, they are going on a pilgrimage. They’re going to be overseas. When are the leaving? I don’t know. How long will they be gone? For weeks! They’re going to be walking very far! She scoffed, but seemed to realize complaining that they were going on a pilgrimage for Easter wasn’t probably not a good idea! It didn’t stop her from claiming my brother was “running away” from her (he’s visited her more often than I have!), and so on.

I do think I was able to get her to calm down about things a bit. I tried talking about how this was temporary, and just one step to getting her to where she wants to be, and how the system works. She didn’t like that, but she also started to get upset because someone else came into the room and sat in one of the armchairs behind me. She kept glaring at him over my shoulder, and making comments about him being there while she had company. I kept reminding her, this is a public room!

At one point, she started to get things out of her purse, then got up to leave, telling me to wait for her. It turned out she had gone into the hall to talk to the guy working on the door, complaining about the noise, saying it was making her go deaf (my mother’s hearing is better than mine) and started crying again. He told her he was almost done and it wouldn’t be much longer, so she came back in.

I had hoped she had forgotten, but my mother got out her checkbook. She said, she wanted to pay for the work on the truck. !!! I tried to defer, but she insisted. I admit, she was generous about it, in her own way. Normally, she would ask for exactly how much it cost, then write out for an amount to the penny, or somewhat less. She didn’t even ask how much it cost, but told me to how much to write it out for so she could sign it. It will mostly cover the cost of the repairs.

I’m not going to deposit it until I’ve checked with my brother. He manages her accounts very well on her behalf. At one point, she asked me how much was in her account, thinking my brother told her. I said, I have no idea. It’s none of my business! I’m not sure if she approved of that, or was angry I didn’t know. 😄

We talked some more about her living situation and getting her into somewhere permanent. It’s frustrating to simply not know. In the end, it’s the government that decides, through the health care system. We have no say in the matter, but now that she’s in the system, it should work out better than trying to get where she wants to be from outside the system.

I noticed my mother had her rosary around her neck, so I suggested she pray the rosary. She said it gets hard to pray (referring to her own mental function; she does recognize that she is having increased cognitive issues). I reminded her that God doesn’t need words to know what she is praying for. I suggested that, if she starts feeling really anxious, to even just hold the cross on her rosary and use that to keep her mind on God. I couldn’t remember the exact words at the time, but reminded her of Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (yes, I had to look it up – I remember the words, not the chapter and verse! 😄) She immediately knew the verse I was referring to, and it really seemed to perk her up. So we held hands and prayed together, and that seemed to help her a lot more.

Eventually, though, I had to head out, as I knew the roads would not be very good for long. She walked with me to the door. One of the things we’d talked about was the vitamin for her dry macular degeneration, and I’d explained that I made the calls to get a prescription faxed to the nursing station. She said she wasn’t getting them yet, so I said I would ask. Thankfully, because she walked me out, it helped me remember – and I’m glad I did!

They never got the prescription.

We talked for a while, and I said I would call the optometrist where she got the original prescription from and find out what was happening. I was concerned about my mother walking back on her own using her walker, but one of the nurses had seen us and was waiting. She assured me she would get my mother to her room okay.

From there, I made a stop at the gas station to update the family. Not to get gas, though. While I was visiting with my mother, the gas prices went from $1.359 to $1.419!

I’m glad I left when I did, as conditions were starting to worsen, but I got home okay – and the truck behaved the whole time.

As soon as I was settled in, I made a bunch of calls. Apparently, the prescription for my mother’s eye vitamin did get faxed, yesterday. In the end, the receptionist I spoke to said she would try and print out what she had in her system and fax it again, as the optometrist was working a different location until next week. Some time later, I got a call from the TCU letting me know they got it. She then explained that this vitamin comes in two forms. A soft gel, which my mother was getting in her bubble packs, and a tablet form. They only get the tablet form. If my mother wants the soft gel, we would have to provide it. I explained that, with my mother, she believes that because they look different, it’s the wrong medicine – she believes that of all her medications – and that we’ve tried to explain it to her. I said to give her the tablets for now (I don’t want her to go without it, as she is complaining about vision loss), and to explain to her what that specific tablet is. We’ll see how she does with that, for now. If necessary, we’ll have to get something set up with the local pharmacy for those.

I’m glad I finally made it to visit my mother, but it’s so frustrating. I understand why she’s not happy there, and absolutely understand her desire for more quiet. It’s part of what we like about living in the boonies, after all! At the same time, I know my mother well enough to know that a lot of this is self inflicted. My mother is one of those people that always sees the worst in others, and interprets things in their worst possible light. I remember when my father when through a lot of this, and at every stage, he was always so thankful, so grateful, to the people around him, whether it was the home care aids or the nursing home staff. He always let them know how much he appreciated them for how well they took care of him. Every time I called him, he would go on about how great they all were. My mother? She’s the complete opposite, most of the time, and it’s not getting any better as she gets older. In fact, the only person she will speak highly of these days is…

Yup. Our vandal. She says, they’re getting along good now. I reminded her of that last letter he wrote to her, and the horrible things he said to her, and that he hasn’t stopped. He may be behaving around her when his wife is around, but he’s still doing things (I didn’t tell her about him driving by while I was shoveling out the plow ridge, slowing down to a crawl at the end of the driveway). She thinks he’s changed. I said, I hope so, but he’s why my late brother’s two kids now say they want nothing to do with our family, thanks to his lying about us. She dropped the subject.

All we can do is hope she can finally get to the nursing home she wants to be in, but I’m starting to wonder if she’ll even be happy there. There will be people talking in the halls. There will be noise. At least she’ll have her own room, though. Maybe that will be enough.

We shall see.

Nothing else we can do. It’s all up to the system…

… and the system sucks.

The Re-Farmer

No, I’m not crazy

March 3, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

It’s a good thing I have such a good relationship with our garage, or they would think I AM crazy!

But first, the cuteness.

This morning, my daughters told me I needed to very quietly go over to my husband’s room and check out his hospital bed.

I found Big Rig, in her natural habitat.

Burrowed under his covers and using a neck pillow for her chin.

A couple of hours later, my husband sent this photo. Cheddar and…

…

He said the paw disappeared right after he took the photo. 😄😄

On to the weirdness of the day.

Today, I had an afternoon appointment to get the truck looked at again. When I headed out – very early – I found the console display was still working, but the warning dings from the door still weren’t happening. I didn’t even try to test it out on 4 wheel drive, though. I was already stressed out. Whether the shuddering was happening or not happening, it wasn’t going to alleviate that stress.

When I got to the garage and dropped off the key, I spent time some time talking to the owner. I told him what was working and still not working, and that I hadn’t tested the 4 wheel drive (he understood why not!). We talked about the battery, and the possibility of there being something draining the battery while it’s parked. The battery is only 2 years old. He said some batteries only last that long. We got it from him, though. It wasn’t the highest end battery, but it’s far from the lowest end, either. We also talked about the cold potentially affecting it, and I remembered to tell him when we first had an issue with the battery, early in the winter.

Then I was off.

I walked across town (all 5 or 6 blocks) and had lunch, then walked the last couple of blocks to the beach. The ice fishing village is still there.

There was also heavy equipment clearing the snow to make roads and open areas on the ice. I seem to recall seeing fliers for some sort of ice event coming up.

Clearly, the ice on the lake is still incredibly thick!

Then I started walking back, stopping at a few places long the way. I even remembered to stop at the pharmacy and get our printouts to do our taxes. My husband finally got his second T4A, so we can do that now. My daughter will be able to claim prescriptions on her taxes for the first time. I couldn’t get her pharmacy records without her permission (I have a signed document so I can get my husband’s, every year), but I was able to arrange for it to be included with her prescription delivery later in the week. This will be the first year for both my daughter and I that we can claim the Disability Tax Credit.

By the time I got back to the garage, it was about 45 minutes past my appointment time. The truck was still in the garage and the mechanic was about to take it out for a test drive to see if it was still doing that shuddering thing while in 4 wheel drive. I suggested he try it in the grocery store parking lot, rather than the highway, since it seems to be triggered in slippery conditions.

The mechanic asked me about the door chime. I told him it still wasn’t working when I drove over.

It’s working now.

???!!!

They didn’t do anything. It was simply working when he drove it into the garage.

When talking to the owner, he said he could even hear it from his office when the truck was driven in, and the mechanic got out, leaving the keys in the ignition.

I told him, when I parked in their lot, it still wasn’t working.

Like I said, it’s a good thing we have a good relationship. If I say it wasn’t working, he doesn’t doubt me. It’s just so very strange!!!

He told me he tested the battery himself.

It’s fine. No sign of any problems.

We talked about that for a bit, and he told me of a possibility that had occurred to me when I was first driving the truck home and realized the console display wasn’t working. It is likely that when the battery got low enough, it started shutting off anything unnecessary that was using power. With some vehicles, once the battery drops below a certain threshold, you can’t even start them until it’s been charged again. Once I recharged the battery on Sunday, that would have allowed the console display to start working again. Why the door chime didn’t start working again until today, we don’t know, but it’s likely related.

Around then, the mechanic came back with the truck, parking it just outside the bay doors. Watching the cameras, we saw him step out, look at the camera, raise both hands and just shrug.

It was working fine.

I told him about needing to drive into the city, and various other things I need to drive to, and he said it should be fine. Driving is good. Sitting parked is not. I do know that, but I try to avoid driving in winter in particular.

I did remember to ask for a price on the light on the back of the cab that I idiotically broke because the garage door wasn’t open far enough. He started to look it up and then said, get it from Amazon. I will get a better price there. Then, once I have it, I can bring the truck back and he’ll install it for me. I asked if he had a part number and he said just to look up, third brake light.

I even got to talk to the mechanic a bit as I was going to the truck. He also assured me that it should be fine for all the driving I need to do.

From there, I drove across to the grocery store, then updated my family. There were just a few things I wanted to pick up for today because, tomorrow, my daughter and I will be finally doing the Costco run! I plan to go to the older location we’ve been going to for years, instead of the new location on the other side of the city, as the old location is right next to a Canadian Tire.

Just in case something goes wrong. Because I’m still absolutely paranoid about the truck! 😄

Right now, though, not only has all the recent weird stuff gone away on its own, but so has the tire warning stuff that’s been there for so very long.

Which means that truck is actually better now than it was before, with no one having actually done anything but do lots of testing and checking.

For that, all I can say is, Thank you, God.

When I got home, I texted the garage about the tire warnings that have been there for so long, now being gone. He said, it must be a ghost! 😄😄 They’d had trouble getting readings off the sensors the last time I brought the truck in for the front tires to be worked on. They checked all four sensors because of those warnings. I remember watching four guys going from tire to tire, looking perplexed at their device’s screen. We had originally thought it was because the batteries might have died or something, but clearly, that cannot be the case! The main thing was that the tires themselves were fine.

So that’s where we are at now. The truck is home, and we’ve got a lot of driving to get caught up on things that should have been done a while ago.

Since we are finally going to be going to the city tomorrow, I’ve contacted the person from the rescue that picked up Kohl from us, taking the carrier with her. The sun room cats have knocked one of the carriers off its shelf a few times too many and it can’t be clocked shut anymore, so we need to get the carrier back. The carrier is now with someone else, and we’ve just arranged to meet along the way tomorrow morning, before she gets to work. We’ll be leaving quite a bit earlier than usual, but that’s okay.

Now it’s stock up shopping, doctor’s appointments, dump runs, runs to the feed store and, of course, finally getting to visit my mother! Once again, we are now the closest to where she is.

Oh, and our vandal and his wife have already visited her twice since she’s been transferred to the current TCU. The staff there have been warned about him, and yet… today, my brother told me that a check just went through my mother’s account. A check for a substantial amount of money, made out to our vandal and written out by our vandal’s wife for my mother to sign (my mother can no longer write checks out herself), dated just a few days ago. This is one of the reasons why we didn’t want our vandal to be able to have access to my mother without supervision. The problem is, they can’t have a staff member just hang out in the room with them. So, they managed to somehow guilt my mother into throwing money at our vandal again. The crazy thing is, while she has been able to help out with paying for things at the farm, even things she offered to pay for in advance, she does things like try to back out, or tries to use it as a way to control us, or guilt us, and makes a big deal over the fact that she “helped”. Which she has never done, when it comes to our vandal. And there’s nothing we can do about it, as long as her cognitive decline is as relatively mild as it is now. She isn’t at the state where my brother, as PoA, becomes wholly responsible to act on her behalf in that regard. At least we were able to get the doctor at the hospital to agree, officially in her file, that my mother cannot sign legal documents, and that if she is convinced to do so, it would not be legally binding. I don’t think that quite applies to writing checks.

Meanwhile, my mother says she wants me to bring her some of her cash stash she asked me to hang on to for her. Most of which got deposited into her account, which my brother explained to her when going over her finances recently, but she still thinks I have all of. She has no need for money where she is, and we don’t know where the money she had before went to. Sure, she sometimes insisted I take some cash for gas, but almost never enough to actually cover the cost of gas. A few bucks here and there. We did learn she tried to give money to staff at the hospital to basically bribe them to pay more attention to her, but never managed to actually give them any (that probably would have gotten them fired). I guess now we know where the rest of her cash went to.

We also know why our vandal and his wife have been finding ways to visit her so often, even though he’s supposedly at death’s door right now.

*sigh*

It is so hard to protect my mother, when she works so hard to sabotage our efforts.

Anyhow.

Visiting my mother is on the list of things I need to do, now that I’ve been assured the truck has been checked and rechecked and everything is running just fine.

Time to get things done.

The Re-Farmer

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