After what happened with our vandal yesterday, my older daughter joined me while doing my morning rounds. My own personal bodyguard.
Nothing was untoward; he didn’t come back and vandalize anything in the night. I’ve gone through the trail cam files. It was interesting to see that he had stopped at the end of our driveway with his tractor, when going in the other direction, before my incident with him happened. He didn’t actually do anything other than look like he was about to climb down, but then kept on going. It’s like he was just looking to start something, so the timing of my coming home as he was returning was an “opportunity” he couldn’t pass up on.
This morning, however, has been routine, other than extending my rounds to include more of the outer yard. My watering last night was thorough enough that I didn’t need to water again this morning. Which is good, because we never really cooled down during the night. We apparently briefly dropped to 20C/68F at about 6am, and immediately started heating up again. We’re supposed to hit 31C/88F or higher today. We’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings and, to be honest, I’d love a good thunderstorm right now. It’s really muggy out there. Everything seems to be passing to the north and south of us right now, but there is a large system making its way across the prairies that might reach us, maybe by tomorrow. We shall see.
The yard cats were already feeling the heat. They got their kibble and kitten soup – I actually saw Sprout eating inside the isolation shelter, though she ran off right away. I refilled the garbage can “heat sink” reservoir in the greenhouse, as it will actually help cool things down during the day. The luffa pots are on the ground, where it’s coolest, and they are heat loving plants, but I don’t want them to get cooked!
After filling the reservoir, the water in the hose was almost cold (our well water usually gets ice cold, even in the summer), so I refilled all the cat water bowls. The one in the sun room was filthy. I heard distinctive racoon noises in the sun room last night. When I went to chase out the racoon, I spotted the two baby racoons, struggling to hide between the lower window and the counter shelf. One couldn’t quite squeeze in after the other. So I left them be. They do leave the water bowls incredibly filthy, though!
I also put frozen water bottles in all the water bowls. By the time I finished my rounds, they were almost thawed out already. I will switch them out, once the previous ones have had a chance to freeze again.
While checking on the grapes before coming inside, I spotted an adorable Eyelet.
That top step to the storage house is a favourite spot for many cats!
With the heat, manual labour outside is not going to happen today. So we made other plans. My older daughter is treating us to Chinese food, as I have a birthday this month. We’ll be loading up on the proteins, as we can do the vegetables and rice ourselves. The girls are thinking of doing a stir fry, so I went out to gather a few things to include with some of the vegetables I harvested yesterday.
Just enough for today. There’s a variety of radish pods from both beds with them, plus a few of both types of sugar snap peas. Then I figured, why not? and gathered a few herbs. The plants aren’t very big, so I didn’t want to pick much. On the right is some basil, with a few lemon balm leaves, sage in the middle, a few sprigs of thyme – just one sprig of the lemon thyme, as it’s smaller than the English thyme – and then some dill fronds on the left. These are self seeded, so picking these was a bit like weeding. There are even some poppies coming up – most likely the “wild” double poppy that’s been growing in that area since before we moved here. I did try growing bread seed poppies in this location before, but when it comes to self seeding, it was the old variety that has been coming up, just like the dill has been, for years!
We’ll be heading out this afternoon, when the post office reopens, to pick up a package along the way. We had tried to get my daughter a cane for her birthday, ordering one from Etsy, but that never made it, thanks to the delivery company f*****g with us. My husband contacted the maker about it and they took our physical address, but nothing came of it and, as far as I know, my husband was never refunded the money.
So he bought another cane for my daughter, from somewhere else, and it came in yesterday. The store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays, so by the time my husband got the email notification, we couldn’t pick it up anymore.
We’ll pick it up today, then go to town to pick up the food order. My younger daughter will be coming with me.
Her surgical site is doing fantastic, as is her recovery. So fantastic, she’s had to wear a wrist brace, just to keep from using her hand too much. She has full mobility, and the pain of the surgery is far less than the pain of the ganglion. She is so thrilled to have finally evicted Squidly!
She also finally got the call back from the endocrinologist today, confirming an appointment in October. We’ve looked up the clinic address in the city. I am not looking forward to trying to find parking! It’s basically in the heart of downtown. There are plenty of parkades to choose from, but the streets are all one way and it’s always a hot mess of stupid traffic, a major transit hub and suicidal pedestrians. I used to work in the area, many years ago, and even lived across the river from there. So I still sort of know it.
Really not looking forward to driving around there. We’ll have to make sure to leave extra early, to give plenty of time to drive in circles to get into where we want to go.
The plan for this morning was to head out nice and early to get the garden watered before things got too hot.
The problem with that was, at 4am, we were still at 21C/70F out there. We never got any cooler than that, overnight.
Still better than today’s expected high of 31C/88F, so I was heading out somewhere around 6am to get started. The outside cats were a bit confused by the early feeding, though! 😄
The sky was certainly dramatic as I continued my rounds.
(Major interruption; I got a call from home care while typing the above. Guess who had to drive to my mother’s for her morning med assist again? It … was not really a good visit. More on that later.)
Where was I…
Ah, yes.
While I was doing my rounds, I could hear thunder in the distance, but I went ahead and did all the watering, anyhow. It did start raining while I was out there, but barely enough to get my shirt wet.
I did snag what look to be the last of our turnips.
I plan to include them in a large crock pot meal that won’t heat up the house, so we can just reheat individual portions whenever we want. In this heat, none of us have much for appetites, and no one wants to cook.
As I was finishing up outside, I spotted this adorable sight.
With the heat and humidity, the kittens are sleeping a LOT. I didn’t see the wild kittens at all this morning. Hopefully, they had a chance to have the cat soup I put out for them, before the adults ate it all. All the bowls I use for that were empty before I was done, and I was able to gather them all up to the old kitchen, ready for their evening feeding.
Thankfully, what rain we did have made things more pleasant while I was doing the watering.
Once inside, I did have a chance to have breakfast before I started on this blog post, when I got the call about my mother’s med assist. They couldn’t find anyone to cover her 9:30.
Looking at the time as I talked to the scheduler, it was 9:32. They do know it takes me a while to get to my mother’s (just the prefix on my land line would tell them that). I called my mother to let her know I’d be coming and…
She started asking me if I was okay for coming over. After a bit, I figured out she was wondering if I had any appointments or such that was being interfered with. I assured her that I did not; my appointments were yesterday, not today.
She then started to suggest I didn’t need to come. She could take her pills herself.
???
It turns out that, when the pharmacy delivered her bubble pack refills yesterday, she tucked one pack aside (a week’s worth). The home care aid put the rest in the lock box.
I assume the home care aid did not count how many packs there were, to make sure they were all there.
This is not a good thing but, to be honest, I can’t fault her for doing it. Home care has not been reliable.
I told her, don’t touch it. I’ll be right there!
After a quick change, I was on the road and soon at her place.
Where I found her with a recycling bag on the floor, the contents of her recycling bin all over, as she was sorting and stacking the various Meals on Wheels food containers (I don’t even know if they can be recycled). Once I figured out what she was doing, I told her she didn’t need to do that; just put it all in the bag. Today was her town’s day for picking up the recycling, so I helped her bag everything so I could take it out to the stack in front of her building for pick up.
She became angry at me for not tying off the bag correctly.
While this was being done, I noticed my mother had a page from the local free weekly paper she gets. It was the obituary/memorial section.
There was a picture of my later brother and father in there.
The beginning of July is the anniversary of my brother’s death. He’s been doing this for the last 15 years now. When my father passed, he changed the picture to one with both my brother and father in there. The text is a bizarre and completely false claim in regards to this property and a cottage that doesn’t exist. My mother, however, was all gooey about seeing the ad, and isn’t our vandal so wonderful for doing this? He does it every year. No one else does. He pays to do this!
I said to her, you do realize he’s not doing this out of the kindness of his heart, right?
One the one hand, I’m glad his passive aggressive and very public attack on the family is going right over her head. On the other, I’m frustrated, because it’s working. All the abuse and lies and theft over the years, but he paid money to put a picture and lie about my late brother, and that makes him better than me or my siblings.
*sigh*
Anyhow…
After dropping the recycling bag off outside, I went straight into the washroom to wash my hands before getting her meds. The door was open, so she could see me. As I left, she asked me, did you wash your hands?
…
I got her morning meds out, along with her inhaler, making sure to check the front of the bubble pack to get the Friday morning bubble, before opening it from the back.
It wasn’t until I updated my siblings after getting home that I realized, something was wrong.
When I was there to do her morning med assist on Wednesday, I was trying to figure out why her Tuesday meds were still in the bubble pack. When confirming which bubble I needed to open this morning, I saw that yesterday’s meds were gone, as were Wednesday’s…
… and Tuesday’s.
I’d taken a picture of the active bubble pack when I was there on Wednesday, as well as the pack in the lock box, because the pack in the lock box should have had the two Monday evening pills still in it, and it didn’t.
What the heck is going on?
I didn’t clue into that at the time, though, and just kept going.
I had decided that, since I was in my mother’s town, anyhow, I would stop at the grocery store to pick up some of their deli meats that are priced so much better than elsewhere. I told my mother I was going to go to the grocery store, and asked if she needed anything that I could pick up for her?
She thought about it for a moment, then said I could change her bedding for her.
…
Okay.
So I did that, which took a while. Then put away her clean laundry so I could use the basket. Changed her table cloth out for her, too. That done, I explained again that I was going to go to the grocery store after, and did she want anything?
It turned out she missed the part about planning to go for myself, anyhow, and couldn’t figure out why I was going to go to the grocery store for her, when she didn’t need it. I explained again, and she had me check her fridge for her. I pulled a couple of things out of the freezer, but she was still okay in general.
Then she wanted to have a serious talk with me.
*sigh*
Long story short, my mother is still convinced that we should be able to go directly to the nursing home she wants to go to and ask them to take her in. I tried to explain to her that this is not how things work. They’re not like an apartment that you can rent. They are part of the health care system, so they have no say. Plus, the only time they have open beds is when someone dies, and then they have a waiting list of people who want to get in. She kept cutting me off and getting angry as I tried to explain this, and said, they are kind people. There are still kind people in the world. Unlike you.
…
She managed to throw that one at me several times.
She also thinks my SIL, who has always been so incredibly kind to my mother and stood up for her, so many times, is “pulling away” my brother from her. That’s why he never calls (he does) or visits (we were both there just this past weekend).
She also thinks the home care staff that I have to cover for are not showing up because they don’t feel like it.
My mother is a great one for projecting all sorts of motivations onto people, and if I make any attempt to suggest there might be other reasons, she accused me of always taking “their” side on things, and being against her.
*sigh*
After a few more comments about how other people were so kind “unlike you” and making digs at my brother and SIL, my mother started talking about her stuff and how we need to decide who gets the pictures, or if she will donate them to a museum.
She has no understanding of what museums take or why, but she’s convinced these old prints have some sort of incredible value, because she likes them, and she understands that there is value in things…
She also brought up about her health and I reminded her that, if she’s really feeling bad, use the life line. That’s the fastest way to get help, plus they would contact me.
Oh, you know I’m not good with technology.
I reminded her, she just needs to push a button. That’s it. She has pushed it by accident, leaning against her table, as it is.
She’s angry about having the life line, because she’s paying more than $50 a month for it, and they’re not doing anything.
…
*sigh*
So all in all, it was a pretty unpleasant visit with my mother this time. Then, after all her digs about how unkind I was, she actually thanked me for coming out and gave me gas money.
Her digs against me were no big deal. She always has something, and it’s water off a duck’s back for me. The things she was saying about my brother and SIL – two of the most awesome people who have done so much to help her for so many years – that got under my skin. I’m still ticked off.
As for the rest of my day, I suspect the evening watering will be skipped again. The heat is supposed to linger until late, and we currently have both heat warnings and severe thunderstorm warning happening right now. It’s past 2pm as I write this, and we’ve reached 29C/84F, and the humidex has us at 34C/93, and it is MUGGY out there. I hope we do get the storms, but from what I can see of the weather radar, these storms are all coming up from the US and will only hit the southern parts of Canada.
As for me right now, I have this sudden urge to take a nap to recover my sanity.
As I write this, it’s just past 4:30pm, and we’ve surpassed our predicted high of 31C/88F and reached 33C/91F.
That couple of degrees makes a huge difference!
It could be worse; some areas to the south of us reported up to 40C/104F today.
It was a relatively cool 16C/61F when I did my morning rounds at about 6am. I even spotted the two feral kittens that are starting to show up regularly. No idea what’s happened to the other one or two that I saw.
When we got home from the physio appointment, there we were immediately greeted by Sir Robin, while Havarti and Eyelet remained splatted in the shade. Eyelet got up, waiting for their special food, while Havarti just lay there, unmoving – so I got a picture! The last image above was taken after everyone had a chance to eat their fill, and the full belly babies were back in the shade. Grommet was around, too; just not where I could get him in the picture.
Before we headed out, I spotted this on my bed and had to get a picture.
It looks like we’ve got a two headed cat in there! Ghosty and Tin Whistle had merged into one. 😄
That inside cats have also been splayed all over, but it’s a whole lot better for them, that’s for sure. Thank God for the AC my brother gave us. Between that and the living room, and a fan blowing the cooler air to there rest of the house, it’s so much better than previous years – and now my daughters have their AC set up in their upstairs “apartment”. It’s the fist summer since living here that the upstairs has been at all bearable. Even with that, they had to strategically place a fan to counter the wave of hot air coming up the stairs.
My husband and I got to enjoy the truck’s AC when we headed out just before noon for his appointment at the pain clinic. This was his first appointment with their physiotherapist, which made it more of a meet and greet. We met him last week, of course – he even remembered us a bit – but this was a more dedicated meeting.
It was a combination of interesting and encouraging… and not.
The interesting thing was, after asking questions about my husband’s specific issues and past treatment (the conclusion with the doctor, last time, was basically what we expected; he’s already tried everything there is to try, and there isn’t anything more or new they can offer him), he talked a fair bit about how things have changed in physio in more recent years. He talked about all the typical recommendations given out for decades; loose weight, exercise more, focus on core exercises, etc. simply haven’t been working. They weren’t helping people get past their pain or improve healing of injuries. There have been a lot of studies trying to figure out why, and they found many factors were at play. An example would be how they’d have two groups of people doing comparable exercises. Some people would report improvement, even though there was no measurable improvement in their condition. Others would report no improvement at all. When taking blood tests before and ever activities, it was found that people all had inflammation. The group that reported feeling better has less inflamation, the other didn’t – and the only difference was that the ones that reported improvement actually enjoyed the activities they were doing. The ones with the worst outcomes did not enjoy the exercises they were doing, and they had higher inflammation after their activities. Inflammation in general, it was found, played the biggest role in how people felt. It basically came down to individual body chemistry.
There were also things like how doing small amounts of activity more often was more beneficial that doing lots in a short time. He also talked about how misleading the “in your head” idea was. When he did talk about weight, he mentioned studies that found that when people enjoyed their activities, did them regularly without overdoing it, etc. they reported improvements, both physical and mental, with no change in their weights at all. This was something I appreciated hearing, since part of why my husband’s conditions deteriorated so much was because he started seeing a nurse practitioner (the only person available after our regular doctor went on medical leave and didn’t come back), she basically ignored the reason he as there – his back injury – but focused almost entirely on his weight. His blood sugars, too, but it all came down to his weight. Of course, in being the “good” patient, he just went along with it. For some two years. It was like she believed if only he would lose the weight, all the other things would magically go away. Of course, he never lost any weight at all in that time, and we finally insisted that she start focusing on his back injury. When he saw the spine specialist, the damage was too severe, and there was really nothing that could be done but give him stronger and stronger pain killers.
So having someone who knew to focus on the actual reason my husband was there, and not pet causes, was always a relief.
That was the encouraging part.
The discouraging part was, we already knew all this. This is really old news, even though most doctors don’t seem to know anything about these studies. I’ve been reading papers on this stuff for more than a decade.
After some discussion, a plan of action was worked out. My husband will start doing tai chi again (he used to teach it at one point), starting out by finding his limit, then maintaining the activity regularly, based on those limits.
Next month, we’ll be having a phone appointment with him.
As we were leaving and talking about it, my husband said he felt like the guy was a puppy discovering a new and fabulous toy and being all excited about it. Which is only because we were already aware of the stuff he was talking about already.
We shall see how it pans out.
Once the appointment was done, with a follow up telephone appointment booked at the end of this month, we headed over to the nearby Walmart to have lunch – breakfast, for my husband. My older daughter got quite sick last night, and hadn’t even been able to eat all night, while she was working. I made sure there was something she could eat before going to bed for the day! She sent me some funds to pick up heat and eats, which I did while my husband finished his lunch. Then it was off for home, with a brief stop at the post office. My husband had ordered more Tei Fu lotion for me, since it helps so much with the Charlie horses. He ordered three tubes, so the company added a freebie. It was a bottle of cordyceps, for “… energy, stamina, endurance and strength”. That one free bottle costs more than one tube of Tei Fu lotion! That’s quite a freebie!
I’m happy to be well stocked with Tei Fu lotion, though. I was running low.
When we got back, we found my younger daughter had the gate open for us, and was out hanging laundry in this heat! She’d done all their laundry, including bedding, plus my laundry, too! What a sweetie.
I planned to head out to water the garden this evening, but I’m not so sure about that right now. We’re at 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and apparently won’t be dropping below 30C/86F until after 9pm! Even the overnight low is expected to be 21C/70F
I think I’ll just do my evening rounds and go to bed much earlier than usual. I’ve been waking up as it starts to get light out, anyhow, so I may as well wait and do the watering in the morning. That way, I won’t be shocking the plants with cold well water. Something the winter squash and melons could certainly do with out, with how much damage they got from that one cold night a while back! We’ve definitely lost a few completely.
Not looking forward to doing my evening rounds this evening, that’s for sure! Stepping outside is like walking into a wall of heat.
Today was my day to go to my mother’s to get her monthly blood test done, so I just did my usual rounds this morning. My daughter was a sweetheart and took care of watering everything before it got too hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but we might also get thunderstorms, depending on which app I check, so we’ll see if we have to water twice again or not. I’m starting this past 9:30pm, and we’re still under heat warnings!
Once the rounds were done, I was soon off to my mother’s.
Going to my mother’s did not go as expected. Which is saying something, since visiting her rarely goes as expected.
The plan was to wait until home care came for the morning med assist, then I would take my mother for her blood work. She’s got a new 2 week schedule, and her morning visits are now at 9:30-9:40am. They seem to switch from 9am to 9:30 fairly often. She gets 10 minutes scheduled in the morning, rather than the usual 5, because they’re supposed to be doing things like emptying her commode and offering assistance in getting dressed. I don’t think they’re doing that. They just give her her meds and leave.
When I got there, I went into the lock box to get the paperwork for this month’s lab tests; it’s a place to store them where they won’t get “lost”. My mother told me to give her her pills, but I said no. We’ll wait for the home care aid to arrive.
Which is when she told me they didn’t come for the two evening visits on Monday…. no… Sunday…
That’s when she showed me the new schedule (the old one was still taped to the wall), where she’d written “no one” around those two time slots. She still kept trying to tell me it was Sunday, but it couldn’t have been.
Since they didn’t show up, she took them herself.
She would have had only Monday left in the lock box, and would have gotten the Monday morning meds from there. The pharmacy tried to deliver her refills later in the day, but she though I’d already paid for them, so she told them she didn’t have enough cash, and tried to say I paid for them. They left her with 1 week’s refills (for free) until it could be straightened out. That got worked out and my mother was supposed to get the refills delivered today. I thought she wanted me to take her to the pharmacy herself after her bloodwork, when I talked to her on the phone last night, but when I got there this morning, she said she was prepared to “pay again”. She’s still convinced she’s being double charged and cheated. Meanwhile, they’re bending over backwards to help her!
Anyhow, this left my mother with a week of pills and no one with the code to put them in the lock box. She’s already had her Monday morning pills, so when no one showed in the evening, she took them from the new package, since the other one was in the lock box. It was pure chance that she took the right day’s pills, since she ignores that completely and gets furious that they can’t give her pills from missed days.
It took me a while to get things straight, and I had to check and recheck things because it just didn’t make sense. When I went into her lock box on Friday, she had a bubble pack that would be finished on Sunday, and a bubble pack with just Monday on it, plus one set of morning pills from a day (a Thursday) that got missed.
The person who saw her Tuesday morning put the new bubble pack into the lock box. The lab requisitions sheets were on the bottom, of course, so I had to take everything out to get them.
The thing is…
Tuesday’s pills are still there. All of them.
The older bubble pack should have hat the two Monday evening bubbles still full.
They were empty.
So what did my mother get, yesterday? She mentioned that an empty bubble pack got thrown out yesterday, but that would have been the one that was finished on Sunday. Did that one also have a full Tuesday’s pills in it? I hadn’t thought so. I had no reason to look too closely at that one.
Meanwhile, time went by and the home care aid didn’t arrive when she was scheduled. My mother started saying, oh, she doesn’t feel like coming today… She is convinced that when days are missed, it’s because the home care aids just don’t feel like doing her pills. Just her, though. She doesn’t believe that the rest of the people on their schedule list aren’t getting done, either.
Finally, I decided to call the number for the scheduler at about 9:45 (this is relevant) and left a message explaining that the aid had not arrived yet, and that I had to take my mother for blood work, so I would do her meds myself.
When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine. It was the scheduler, telling me they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.
The time stamp on the message was 10:01.
*facepalm*
Meanwhile, as we were going to the lab, my mother asked me to make sure I stayed to watch while her blood was being drawn. I asked why, as I’m always there, and she basically said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It took a few hours to drag out why she was asking, but the last time we went (In May, because the June one got missed when she got verbally abusive and I walked out), she said I had left to do my own thing – she was very accusatory about it – which I couldn’t remember at the time. While I was not there, she basically thinks the guy faked drawing her blood. She wanted me to be there today to watch and make sure he really did take her blood. Except it was a different person drawing the blood this time.
I brought up the telephone doctor’s appointment after the lab work was done, and she said there wasn’t one. So I brought up my calendar for May. There was my appointment to take her to the lab, then a week later, her follow up telephone appointment with the doctor. Which I remember, because there was nothing of concern with the results, so her assistant called and talked to us, instead. After the call was done, my mother’s comment was, so… the doctor didn’t want to talk to me…
My mother doesn’t remember that call.
I was flummoxed by my mother saying I had left her, but I did finally remember, after I got home. There was a time I’d taken her in, and I had my own requisitions for blood work and an EKG to be done. I wasn’t able to do the blook work, as it needed to be fasting, but I did get the EKG done. So that’s when she would have had her blood drawn while I wasn’t there. I was in another room, getting wired up.
So my mother believes the home care aids are not showing up to do her meds on purpose (she says they want her to die), and she thinks the tech that took her blood last time, faked taking her blood.
It was a very strange day with her, this time!
I had expected to do her grocery shopping after this was done, but she told me she didn’t need one. I asked more specifically about things and ended up getting her a few little things she was running out of. When I got back with the groceries, she had an envelope ready for me to make that had a prepaid envelop. She asked me to mail it for me, and insisted I take it in person, not just drop it in the mail box. The mail box apparently got stolen or vandalized once, some 10 years ago, so she refuses to use it.
By the time I left my mother’s it was just past 11.
It felt like it should have been much later!
She had her Meals on Wheels coming soon, so I left her to that.
Once home, the heat was really kicking in, and I had lots to do when it cooled down, so I did try to take a nap, after updating my siblings about the visit with my mother. I called the home care coordinator and left a message about some of the stuff, but she didn’t call back today. My daughter reminded me that I’ve been wanting to book an appointment with my doctor for this month, instead of next month, and requested a tandem appointment. She now has her own follow up to do, regarding her referral for a reduction mammoplasty. So we are now both booked in the middle of the month.
I have a field of vision test right after that, but I think I’ll have to reschedule. My daughter would have to drive me home, since they’ll have to dilate my eyes. That’ll be less than two weeks from her ganglion eviction, and she might not quite be up to driving quite yet.
Meanwhile, my husband has his first physio appointment at the new pain clinic tomorrow.
July is working out to be a very busy month for medical stuff!
Anyhow.
I am happy to day I did succeed in getting a nap in – I ended up sleeping almost 4 hours! The heat is really draining the energy out of me.
I did, however, get lots done in the garden this evening, once things started cooling down!
Today was our Costco shopping day, and I’ll post about that separately. My day, of course, starting with feeding the yard cats and going my morning rounds.
I’d seen flower buds starting on the Turkish Orange eggplants, but they got quite a bit of cold damage a few nights ago. They are recovering, but it definitely set them back.
Since we were heading to the city this morning, I didn’t do the watering. I had done it last night. With the expected heat in the next few days, we will have to start watering morning and evening. Even if we do get the rain predicted, in a few days, unless we get a downpour, we’ll still need to water.
Before we had to head out, I got a phone call from the autobody shop. The truck is now booked for repair and replacement of the box cover. I will be dropping it off on the 25th, a Friday, and most likely will get it back the following Tuesday.
They will have a courtesy car for me!
I am just so happy with this place. They have gone above and beyond in dealing with the insurance company, trying to keep costs down for us as much as possible, and now even ensuring we still have transportation – small town shops like theirs typically can’t afford to have courtesy cars available. They were even able to make it so we won’t be charged for part of the paint job, dropping the total cost to us by about $140.
That wasn’t the only call we got to get things worked out. While we were driving into the city, my daughter got a call from the hospital, regarding her upcoming ganglion eviction. She now has an exact time to come in, plus they’ll be calling her a few days before to go over her medical history in more detail.
When we got back from the city, it was getting close to when we’d be feeding the outside cats, so once everything was unloaded, I started on that so my daughter could park the truck. The kittens sure to like to go under the truck when we’re unloading!
And under our feet.
With the heat, part of the routine includes switching out frozen water bottles in their water bowls. Before refilling them, I had to run the hose for quite a while, so it wouldn’t be scalding hot. I refilled the leaking “heat sink” container in the portable greenhouse to get all that hot water out. The handy thing about that is that, while the container was put in the greenhouse to release its heat during cold spring nights, when it gets refilled during the day, it absorbs heat and cools down the greenhouse surprisingly quickly.
It’s still hot AF in there. Just not quite as much. 😄 The luffa seem to be doing all right in it, though.
Once I was finally back inside, there were a couple of messages for me – one from the pharmacy, and one from my mother. Both about her bubble packs that were supposed to be delivered today.
I called the pharmacy back, first.
As soon as I said my mother’s name, the pharmacist was all, “oooohhh… yes…”
They did try to deliver her bubble packs today – which is the last day of her medications she had left from the previous month’s packs – but when the delivery person got there and told her how much it would be, my mother told them she didn’t have enough cash.
Also, she told them I’d already paid for it.
I had picked up her inhaler, and it cost almost $200. Her bubble packs were over $200.
What they ended up doing, since today she would be out of her medications, was giving her a week’s worth of her medications – for free! – until we could clear this up.
Once I got all the info from the pharmacist, I told her I would either got to them before they close to pick up the bubble packs, and my mother would pay me back later, or they could deliver them on Wednesday (tomorrow is Canada Day, so they will be closed). I just had to talk to my mother about it, first, and had the exact amount ready for her.
Also, I was startled that my mother said she didn’t have enough cash. She uses only cash, but can’t go to the bank herself anymore so my brother, as PoA, has been making sure she gets her cash for her monthly spending.
Then I called my mother.
*sigh*
When I confirmed with her that I had only paid for her inhaler, not her bubble packs (because there were no bubble packs ready yet), and that I’d told her this at the time, she started to get really, really angry, and even started yelling at me because I used my credit card to pay for it. As if my using my credit card somehow was why there was a charge for the inhaler? Which, according to her, was supposed to be free. Now, she did get to keep the one they used on her while she was in the hospital – back in February! – but that was it. Then there was the cost of her bubble packs. She’s never spent that much on medications in one month before! Except… of course she has. Maybe not all at once, but she has.
I tried to explain to her that she just hasn’t paid her deductible on her insurance, which is through our province’s health care system. (Something not all Canadian provinces has.) She got mad about that, too, telling me she has never had insurance.
Except she has. Even before Canada brought in our medicare system, my father told me, he always made sure they had insurance. Plus, she’s been covered by our province’s prescription insurance for decades. She has to sign a form for it, every year. She’d commented to me about how she sometimes got her prescriptions for “free”, and sometimes not, in the past. Apparently, she had no idea why. I’m not sure why she would get angry at the idea of having insurance, either. She seemed to think having it was a bad thing.
Then she got even angrier when I offered to come into town to pick up her meds. She actually started yelling at me.
Her neighbours must get quite an earful at times.
It took a while to calm her down enough to tell her that the pharmacy knew that, if I didn’t come in today, before they closed, to go ahead and deliver it on Wednesday.
Then I made sure she knew how much she would have to pay for them, and write it down. She tried to say she would remember it, but I insisted she write it down, just in case!
Then I asked if she really was low on cash, and she said she was.
…
I also made sure she understood that the pharmacy gave her a week’s worth of medications for free, because of the mix up. It took a while for her to get what I was telling her, and she was finally happy about something.
Among the other things she got angry at me about was when I talked about her inhaler. What’s “haler”? What is that? I told her, it’s your puffer. Then she got angry that I was calling her puffer an inhaler – followed by my talking about her bubble packs. What bubble? You mean pills?
I use the term “bubble pack” all the time when talking about her pills, but today, she decided she had never heard the term before and was angry at me for saying it.
On the plus side, as quickly as she became angry, she calmed down.
As soon as I got off the phone with her, I messaged my siblings to keep them up to date. My brother ended up phoning me because of what she was saying about being low on cash. There is no way she’s low on cash. There seems to be a combination of things going on. One is that that she probably just lied to the delivery person about not having enough cash because she believed they were already paid for, and thought the pharmacy was trying to cheat her. The other is, she doesn’t use a wallet and keeps her cash in between the pages of a very old booklet I think is a calendar, forgetting that the cash my brother brought for her are still in their envelopes in other parts of her purse. Or, she “hid” some of the money and then forgot about it. Again. The last time she did that, she couldn’t find the envelop and decided one of her neighbours went into her unit while she was in the common room and stole it. She made the accusation many times during social gatherings, without actually saying the person’s name. Then, months later, she found the envelop with all the money still there.
She never did apologize, nor did she ever acknowledge that there was anything wrong with her behaviour.
By the time I got off the phone with her, I was exhausted!
Then I started on this blog post, with some minor interruptions. One of those was to go outside and help my daughter replace the plastic clothes line winch (I kept forgetting the word “winch” when I wrote about setting it up in the first place!) with a metal one we picked up today. We got some more clothes line separators, too, and now both lines have three each. With how long the clothes lines are, they are needed more to keep the bottom of the line from sagging too much under the weight of laundry than to separate the top and bottom. Two was not quite enough. I even remembered to tighten the winch on the older clothes line; that one has had more than a year to stretch out, even though we didn’t use it all that often. We’ll be using them a lot more from now on, weather willing.
Speaking of weather, my daughter and I talked about the upcoming heat. I’m going to be changing my sleep cycles quite a bit. Basically, I’ll be out early to get as much done outside as I can before it gets too hot, get a few hours sleep during the hottest part of the day, before going out again to do as much as I can until it gets too dark, then have another short sleep during the night. None of us tolerate heat well, but there is much that needs to be done!
Which includes working on that permanent trellis again. My arm is doing a lot better since I fell while working on it before. As long as I don’t over do it, I can get back at it. Mostly, it’s just my palm and my shoulder joint that are still hurting, but the entire arm gets tired and sore very quickly, still. At this stage, we’ll be bringing out the little folding scaffold we got last year, and it is definitely going to be a two person job – and not just in case I trip and fall again!
Oh, and I have more adorableness to share with you! After helping my daughter with the clothes line, I spotted Eyelet and managed to get some pictures. He does NOT like to stay still!
Those eyes! Button had the bluest eyes, but Eyelet’s eyes are so much paler. They almost glow blue, when the light hits them right, but I wasn’t able to capture that with my phone’s camera.
Well, it’s time for me to get outside and start watering the garden. It’s about 7:30pm right now, and we’ve barely started to cool down. It’s going to keep getting hotter every day for the next four days, too. Even the overnight temperatures are not much lower. It’s also really muggy, so that’s not much fun, either!
We’re not going to be doing anything for Canada Day tomorrow. I’ve got one day at home to get stuff done, then I’m booked up for the next couple of days.
*sigh*
Looking at the times, I realize I won’t be able to do that shift in my sleep cycle, after all. I’m going to be driving around, instead of sleeping during the hottest parts of the day!
Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.
Time to go water a thirsty garden! Then work on my stock up shopping post.
My tolerance for heat as I get older is really, really dropping. Today was even cooler than yesterday, but I’m still feeling it!
We hit 26C/79F by this afternoon, and the temperature just does not want to drop. We are currently under weather advisories for possible funnel cloud development that specifically includes our municipality.
I don’t expect any in our area.
Last night, I did have an lovely visit with my brother and SIL. As I was walking over to their trailer, I discovered I was being watched.
Two of the possibly four feral kittens in the outer yard. Just look as those adorable little mouths!
Hopefully, they will get used to coming into the safety and security of the inner yard, and we can start socializing them.
I got to bed late. That nap did mess up my sleep cycle, but it was not the only thing. I did finally put together my June garden tour video, using clips I recorded on the 21st. I was so tired, though, I left it and will go over it again before I upload it.
With the heat, I’ve got a couple of fans going, including one aimed to blow air into the hallway from across the room. Which meant keeping my door open for the night.
Poor Butterscotch. At one point, I was sitting at the edge of my bed, spray bottle in hand, watching over her while she ate. For some reason, we have a couple of cats that will basically go after her, on sight. I just don’t get it.
In the end, it was more like I got a couple of short naps during the night. I was up early, though it was so bright out, it felt late. I was able to get all the garden beds watered, along with the trees we’ve planted, both in the future food forest and the outer yard.
I am so glad I pruned away those ornamental crab apple branches in the old kitchen garden, yesterday. My little herb bed was actually getting sunlight this morning!
Once the watering was done, I was going to lie down for about an hour and a half, then head into town in the afternoon. The tightener on the new clothes line started to slip while my daughter was hanging laundry on it. I wanted to go to a hardware store and pick up a metal one.
Well, that didn’t work out.
First was the realization that I forgot to eat breakfast. I clued in when I started feeling nauseous and dizzy, while lying down. So I made a couple of quick sandwiches, then tried to lie down again. Which is when the messages and notifications started coming in like crazy. I finally gave up and got up.
Not that I’m complaining. Some of those messages were from my SIL. My mother has been calling and leaving messages with my brother about something important she wanted to talk to him about, but any time he tried to call back, it was telephone tag. So he was going to take her out for lunch, thinking she would probably go to church, which is just across the street from her building. They were wondering if I wanted to come along, too. My SIL will no longer go there, after my mother declared she was just my brother’s wife, not family. My SIL has been nothing but kind to my mother, has defended her and stood up for her, without making excuses for her behaviour, many times. Yet my mother repaid her kindness with verbal abuse. It took many, many years, but my mother finally managed to drive her way. My SIL still defends my mother and stands up for her, when things call for it, but will no longer go there unless absolutely necessary – and only if someone else, like me, is there.
Knowing how my mother treats my brother, and that she behaves better when I’m there, too, I quite happily said I would come along. I remembered that I wanted to go to the hardware store, too, and my brother was willing to stop at the one in my mother’s town. It wasn’t until we were driving in that I remembered they close on Sundays.
Also, according to their car’s Siri, my mother’s town does not exist, and there are no hardware stores there at all.
???
My brother called Mom just before we got there. My mother had not made it to church, and someone had just finished coming over to give her Communion. So our timing was good.
Once there, my brother wanted us to go to the restaurant right away, but my mother kept stalling. The very important thing she wanted to talk to my brother about was an article she read in Women’s magazine, that the social workers leave copies of with her. The article was about US money, 401Ks, and banking, and about people finding lost bank accounts with money in them. She then dug out a letter that was sent to her back in 1971.
Yes, more than 50 years ago.
It was from a bank.
It seems that when her father died, her mother put some money in the bank for my mother. An inheritance of some kind. My mother didn’t understand the letter or know what to do about it, with her limited English of the time period. So she kept the letter, but never responded. The article reminded her of it.
She has no idea how much was deposited in the account. However, this is Canada. What probably happened is that they kept charging fees on the account before shutting it down as inactive. Or, if it’s still open, she probably owes them money, instead.
Neither of us bothered to try and explain any of that to her. She could not have understood, and it would have just made her upset. However, I recently had a conversation with her, trying to explain compound interest. She’s had a GIC for decades and every year, she would remove the interest earned to put into her regular bank account, so the amount never changed. I’d used a compound interest calculator with hypothetical amounts in it and, using 70 years (the minimum I’m sure of that she’s had such a saving’s account) and only 1% interest. The end result was over $23 million.
So then she read this article and now might be thinking something like this has happened. Which is highly unlikely.
My brother, having PoA, promised to look it up for her. Which is going to be a real pain. It has taken him months to prove he has PoA to various institutions. Plus, in the letter, my mother’s surname is spelled wrong.
Even bringing up the spelling mistake on her name, which my mother never noticed, was more than my mother could grasp as a potential problem. For all we know, that bank doesn’t even have a branch in that northern city anymore.
It was really difficult and confusing to get to the point of what my mother wanted. She kept trying to explain things and going off in different directions. Finally, my brother insisted we start heading out, because he was hungry.
My mother actually tried to get out of it, because of how hard it is for her to move. She had both of us to help her, though, so we did manage to get her to my brother’s car and off to her favourite chicken restaurant.
Before we even got there, she let us know she wanted pizza, not chicken. This place does have good pizza! My brother was surprised, though, as he always gets her chicken. She’s only ever ordered pizza when she’s gone out with me.
When ordering, my brother suggested she get a larger pizza, so she could take some home for later, which she was good with. My brother and I ordered chicken dinners and I ordered fries with mine. I’m not a big fan of fries, by my mother likes them, so I just ate a few and left the rest for my mother.
My mother turned out to be very, very hungry! For all her complaining and not wanting to go out, she very happily scarfed down half her pizza – and was more than happy to accept my fries to take home, too! So she will have supper tonight, at the very least, without having to do any cooking.
The conversation got strange at times. She asked us what we planned to do for Canada Day. It’s on a Tuesday this year. Neither of us have plans, and my mother started to complain about how there isn’t much happening and no one cares anymore. Basically, if she wasn’t aware of planned celebrations, they aren’t happening, and she was making up motivations for it. My brother pointed out that the town closer to us is having fireworks over the lake. They always do it over the lake, so there’s no chance of starting any forest fires.
Well, that got my mother going. She started blaming all the fires on “those people”, then started going on about how, in Europe, they take care of their forests and preserve their forests, and Canada is better than Europe, has more resources, so we could do better. She actually said that, if people weren’t out there setting fires, there would be no forest fires at all.
I finally brought up a map of Canada’s Boreal forest to show her, trying to give her a visual about how the forests in Europe are absolutely tiny compared to Canada – I think our boreal forest itself is bigger than all of Europe. Plus, they have a lot more people, closer together. They can do forest management that is impossible here in Canada.
She was too busy being impressed that I could use my phone to show her a map of the boreal forest in Canada, to get the point I was trying to make.
We managed to change the subject when she started to throw increasingly racist comments, only vaguely connected to the topic at hand.
In general, though, it all went rather well, and she really enjoyed her meal.
Once we got her home, my brother wanted to leave fairly quickly, as he still had things he wanted to get done around their trailer before they have to go back to the city. We did not mention that they were out here, as that would have triggered all sorts of conspiratorial type assumptions on her part. She did start to talk about the farm and get really agitated, asking my brother to promise to never sell the farm after she’s gone. Something she’s asked – demanded – of him, many times. She started going on about how she and my dad had worked so hard there and built it up and she didn’t want all that work to be “wasted” by being sold. My brother tried to point out to her what was already there when they bought the property. They even got a small herd of cows and a couple of horses included, though my dad modernized to using tractors instead of horses. My mother was all excited about all that, not understanding the point my brother tried to make. It was not just our family that built up this farm. It was another family, that sold it into ours. Even then, when my dad’s uncle owned it, it was really his wife that ran things, as she was part of the family that owned it before. Basically, what she’s doing is like the previous family that owned it, trying to tell my parents what they could or couldn’t do with the land.
At one point, we tried to remind her that the reason my brother has the property now is because of the trouble our vandal was causing. She actually tried to say, he’s got nothing to do with it. I happened to be facing my brother to see his jaw drop and his eyes practically pop out of his heat. Our vandal had everything to do with it! I tried to rephrase it so she could understand what we were trying to say – we were literally agreeing with her on most points – when she said, he (or vandal) didn’t own it, she did (at the time), so he was not part of it.
The irony of her saying that was completely lost on her. She doesn’t own it anymore, either, but still wants control. My poor brother is now saddled with this money pit, and she thinks she’s “given” him something that is worth soooooo much. There was no way to explain things to her, and she was getting really worked up, so we had to calm her down before we could say our good-byes. My mother keeps saying, she isn’t going to be with us much longer (I swear, she’s going to outlive us all!) and is obsessed with what’s going to happen with her possessions when she’s gone, and with the farm.
I am really glad I went along. My brother is a much better person than I am, and she can still hurt him. Badly. Which she does often. I can be a sort of buffer for him, and a sounding board for later, when he needs to vent.
By the time we got back to the farm, it was the hottest part of the day and staying there. I was falling asleep on my feet, so I finally had a chance to lie down for a bit, setting my timer for half an hour.
Then adding another half hour.
I finally managed to de-cat myself and get up – Fenrir did NOT want to get off my hip! – but I’ve been barely functional, since. I ended up getting the girls to do the outside cat feeding. When it cools down a bit, I will head outside to do the rest of the evening rounds. I still extremely sleepy – I’ve dozed off while writing this, several times now! I hope to actually get sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we’re finally going to do our Costco shopping! It’s the day before Canada Day, so it’s going to be insane, but maybe not so bad, if I leave early enough.
This heat is sucking the energy right out of me, and it’s not even that hot out (relatively speaking).
We got the first shop done, though, were able to get some good deals today, and got home early enough to be here for when the door guy comes out.
The first issue was a very unfortunate awakening shortly after 3:30am. Two cats started fighting, basically on my head. As if that weren’t bad enough, while flinging whatever cat was there at the time, I found myself with a very wet hand.
It took a while to figure things out. Butterscotch was sleeping next to my head, as she usually does. In the wall shelf that is my headboard, right at pillow height, I have my “leaning sheep”. A large stuffed sheep my daughters got for me for a laugh that has turned out to be an incredibly comfortable back support while sitting in bed, so I keep is stuffed into the shelf near my head to keep it handy.
Leyendecker, for some reason, sprays. Yes, he’s neutered. We have not been able to stop him, and have resorted to setting puppy pads out at areas that are the most commonly targeted.
It seems that last night, he decided to spray my leaning sheep. After the altercation was done, I was looking all over for the wet spot I knew had to be somewhere, and it was only on the sheep, and the edge of the mattress that was directly in front of it.
My older daughter, sweetheart that she is, helped me change my bedding and got the laundry going during the night, as I went back to bed.
Not for long.
At about 5:30, I started hearing a commotion, and it was Ghosty at my computer desk. She was trying to dig into a container of small items she likes to steal, trying to get under the cover. She stopped and ran off when I brought out the spray bottle, but she was soon back, trying to steal the trail cam memory cards.
I have up trying to sleep and got up to do my morning rounds.
As usual, the first thing on the to-do list is feed the outside cats. This time, I just went ahead and put several kitten food bowls on the old kitchen floor before heading out with the dry kibble. I soon had all 7 of them enjoying their special cat soup, without having to fight off any big cats.
My morning rounds were typical, with no extra jobs added on, since we had to head out early. I immediately noticed that, aside from the scratches on my right wrist, the cat altercation caused issues with my injured left arm. Any healing was definitely set back.
We ended up leaving just before 7am. Along the way, we made a stop at a gas station convenience store in two to grab some drinks and snacks to tide us over until we got to the city. Which is when I realized I would need my daughter to let me out of the truck, due to the broken handle on this inside. There was no way I was going to twist my arm over and over, by opening the truck door through the window.
My daughter ended up doing all the even more moderate lifting and carrying for me, today!
Our first stop in the city was the Canadian Tire. We needed more stove pellets for the litter boxes, but we also did some looking around. I ended up getting a very sturdy 25′ tape measure on clearance. We keep either losing or breaking ours, and it was more than half price, so I snagged it. That, with the litter pellets, cost under $20, so I didn’t bother taking my usual picture. My daughter, sweetheart that she is, got the 40 pound bags into the box of the truck for me.
Our next stop was the Walmart, with a quick side trip to Domo gas station along the way, since today is Thursday, and that’s one of their 4¢ off per liter days. We just got $40 in gas. We’ll do a fill at Costco, when I’ll reset my trip meter.
The main things we needed to get at the Walmart was cat food to last us until we do the Costco shop. Aside from that, my older daughter requested some energy drinks, and we were thinking to grab things that were quick to cook, as we’ll be doing a lot of running around in the next while.
This is what $266.47 looks like.
We got some Fresca for my husband and energy drinks (2 for $6) for the girls and I. I decided to get paper towel here instead of Costco, for space reasons. They were on sale, but not as good a sale as the facial tissues. My daughter remembered that we were getting low on spray cleaner, so we grabbed one of those. There are also three 9.1kg backs of dry kibble and two 32pack boxes of wet cat food. My daughter chose some frozen popcorn chicken and pizza bites for the quick eats. There was also a really good price on Sea Bass steaks for my daughters, so I grabbed two of those. The bag of potatoes was also on sale.
The cat food is heavy enough to put in the back of the truck without risk of it being blown away, along with the canned drinks. My daughter just put a bag of cat food over the drink box to keep it from sliding around.
That packed up, we were off to our last stop of the day at the international grocery store. We ended up getting quite a bit more than expected today, as there were some really good sales on.
This is what $324.15 looks like.
There were some really good deals on cheeses today, so we ended up getting the makings of a charcuterie. We got a blue triple cream brie, plus a small regular brie, as my daughter isn’t a big fan of the blue version, a “Pure Perfection” (the brand, I think) gouda, as well as a small jar of clotted cream (we haven’t had that since before we moved out here!), a red wine salami, some Prosciutto and a charcuterie trio of meats, plus a couple of loaves of French bread.
I also found a container of 7 Layer Dip, which my husband has been craving but, for some reason, no one has had in stock for months. So we got one of those, plus a couple of bags of tortilla chips to go with it.
For non-charcuterie protein, there’s a frozen Coho salmon filet for my daughters, a smoked bacon piece and an applewood smoked bacon piece, and a large package of chicken drumsticks. The drumsticks were one of the best deals we saw today, at more than half off. We also picked up an 18 count of eggs to tide us over until we get our usual double flat at Costco. They had an unusually good sale on Pizza Pops, so we got a box of those, too.
In fresh produce, we took advantage of more sales. Black plums, nectarines and plumcots, plus four bags each of two different types of salad mixes.
We also got some plain vanilla ice cream, which my daughters like to add to their coffees. We got some Katsuo Furikaka seasoning, pearl couscous, red rooibos and instant milk tea. In the non-food stuff, we got some argan oil for my hair, and Dabur hair oil for my daughter.
Then, for lunch at home, my daughter picked a couple of sushi for herself and her sister, we got a giant Lumberjack sandwich for my husband, and a teriyaki bento box for me. For the drive home, I got a lime Jarritos soft drink, my daughter got a green tea for herself and a jasmine green tea for her sister.
With all the sales, we got $55.12 in loyalty card discounts, though that doesn’t include sales on items sold by weight. There were deals on loyalty points, too. Normally, it’s $1 gets 1 point. Today, that was double, plus I had an accumulative offer available for spending over $200, resulting in over 10,600 points for our purchase. Come Christmas time, I should be able to get at couple of free turkeys, at least.
So that was our first stock up shopping trip done, and I’m happy with how much we were able to get, with our still limited use of the box until the new cover is installed.
Meanwhile, I’ve had plenty of distractions while writing this!
The door guy has come and gone. He thinks they can save the storm door! That would be good. As for the new exterior door, they do have the style with the window that opens that I was wanting. The need to replace the frame, not just the door, was quite obvious. They will be able to put the arm bar back. There is a hand rail outside that will need to be removed, and that will be put back, too. The only thing that might be an issue is that the frame is partially under the stucco outside, and there’s no way to know what’s under there until the start taking things out. He figures there is a stucco on stucco situation.
Then I got a call from home care.
Not for tonight, thankfully.
Tomorrow morning. So I’ll be going to my mother’s to take care of that. When I called to let her know, though, she told me she had a shopping list for me… that way, I don’t have to come back next week.
I told her, you’re going to need another shopping trip next week, too! 😄
On the plus side, I’ve been chatting with my SIL. They are coming out to stay at their trailer this weekend, but she is coming out tonight. My brother will be able to meet me at my mother’s, tomorrow, and help me out with the med assist, and the shopping. That will be less stress on my arm, and greatly appreciated.
Oh, and on top of all that, I’ve been in contact with the large animal rescue about Poirot’s babies. They will have a cat cage set up for the kittens tonight, and we’re just working out whether we’re taking the kittens to them tomorrow, or if they’re coming to us to get the kittens. My daughter wants to meet them and chat with them about animal care, so I’ve suggested we go to them. Plus, we’ll need to go into town anyhow, to refill our water bottles.
I hope to be done with my mother’s shopping before her Meals on Wheels gets delivered, so we’ll be able to get the kittens delivered in the afternoon.
Tomorrow had started out as an open day, where I could focus on work outside again.
Ha! That didn’t last long!
Meanwhile, we will most likely be doing our Costco shopping in the city on Saturday. If all goes well, we’ll be able to do a proper shop, and not end up making so many extra runs to get things throughout the month. We’ve put in more than twice the usual mileage in June than is typical for us, and the extra cost in fuel is painful on the budget.
July is going to have a lot of driving, too, including for medical reasons.
At least all this extra driving is happening now, and not during the winter months!
I’d love to just crawl into bed right now and hopefully not be awakened by fighting cats landing on my head.
Butterscotch is still hiding under the armchair, poor thing.
My daughter was able to get the most adorable Eyelet pictures when she joined me for the evening walkabout.
Eyelet really loves to be carried and cuddled. So does Sir Robin.
Now for the boring stuff.
I’m happy to say my left arm did rather well during the night. I was pro-active on the pain killers and getting my husband to rub the joints with the Voltaren cream, from my hand to my neck. Oddly, it was less painful on my arm to sleep on my left side, which seems rather backwards. I wasn’t going to complain, though.
All day, I was practically crawling out of my skin, wanting to do stuff. It was a gorgeously cool day out, and it would have been perfect for so many jobs that need to be done around the garden beds and yards. I kept having to stop myself. I had to get my older daughter to do most of the work with feeding the outside cats; basically, I passed the kitten food bowls out to her. I didn’t do my full rounds, but we did walk around the garden beds closer to the house.
I’m glad we did because, as we were in the old kitchen garden, she spotted something odd about the pink rose bush. The stems, in between all those thorns, were covered with little bumps. They were the same colour as the stems, so I didn’t really see them, but she realized they were bugs.
There were so many of them, the rose bush was starting to droop, and the roses that have started to open were showing browned edges on their petals.
We weren’t too sure what to do about it but, just to start, we got the spray bottle of soapy water and sprayed it down.
It was still quite early when we headed back inside, so I tried to lie down again.
That didn’t work.
I finally realized I was getting light headed, so I got up and made myself something to eat. While I was doing that, I started getting some messages from my SIL. I knew my brother was coming out today, so she said she’d find out when he planned to be here.
He already was.
He went into ninja stealth mode and left without her even hearing him – then got here shortly after my daughter and I came in, so we never saw him drive in! He parks by their trailer, which is blocked from our view by trees.
As soon as I could, I headed out to say hello. He was still unloading from his car and hadn’t have breakfast himself, yet, so once everything was in, we chatted in their trailer for a while, as he ate. It gave him a chance to show me the new security camera he picked up for the gate, along with a wi-fi booster.
Over the next while, he plans to do here what he used to have at their house that they sold; add security cameras all over the place. The main thing, though, is the main gate and driveway, since that’s been our vandal’s primary trigger for rage and vandalism. Now that they have so much of their equipment here, our vandal can see bits and pieces of it from the road, and it’s driving him bonkers that he can’t come onto the property to see what’s going on and help himself to things. So I’m quite content with my brother wanting to set up more security cameras!
My brother had lots to do, though, so as soon as he was done eating, I left him to it.
I did head back out and harvested some things from the garden and put them together in an insulated bag for my brother to take home. I finally harvested the garlic scapes, so there was plenty for them, as well. I was also able to pick a couple of turnips, lettuce and chives, with blossoms for them. My younger daughter had cleaned up and smoothed out the stuff she made in her blacksmithing workshop. She set aside her two best ones as a thankyou gift for my brother and SIL for the gifts of that workshop, and I was able to add that in, too.
My brother wasn’t at his trailer, though, so I left it on the step for later and headed back in.
Which is when I got the phone call.
From home care.
*sigh*
Yup. For the third day in a row, no med assist for my mother. Yesterday (Saturday), it was the two evening visits, which get done by the same person. The day before, it was the morning visit. Today, it was the evening visit again.
During our family chat about how things went with my mother, my brother said he was planning to visit my mother, so if it happened again, he could take care of the med assist. Which is great, but I really wasn’t expecting us to have to cover med assists, three days in a row! Yes, we’ve had that happen before, but what was because someone was sick. These visits were all different people.
Before calling my mother, I went to talk to my brother. He wasn’t sure if he would be finished before her first scheduled visit – he had a lot he needed to do before the predicted rain hit. So when I called her, I told her that it might be either me or my brother, but one of us was going to cover her med assist tonight.
My mother wasn’t impressed (none of us are). The weird thing is, she got a double visit on Saturday morning. She had mentioned it to me while I was getting her supper meds out. The last time she said this happened, when the second person came in, my mother said she’d already taken her morning pills – but her morning pills were still in the bubble pack. So I checked, and that was not the case this time, and promptly forgot about it with all the other stuff going on.
As we talked on the phone, my mother was able to tell me when they’d showed up and who they were, though she can’t quite remember the name of the second person.
Then she told me about the 17th, and things got confusing. I thought she was still talking about her double visit, but it was about something else entirely. She said that someone had given her her meds for the 18th instead of the 17th.
???
So she kept her morning meds from the 18th, and stashed them away for the next time no one shows up in the morning.
???????
What I was finally able to get from her is that, when the second person came in for her med assist on the 17th, she noticed a mistake the morning person had made in the form they have to fill out. She had marked the date as the 18th, when it was the 17th.
Which my mother has concluded means that she got the wrong day’s medications. Or something. She’s been furious at me or the home care workers for not giving her the medication from the days that that were missed for some reason, so it’s not really getting the medications from the “wrong” day that bothers her. Basically, she thinks her medications were messed up, even though it was just the date that was wrong.
So when she got her morning medications on the 18th, she didn’t take them, and the home care aid left without making sure she took them.
She then started going on about how we are worried about her messing up her meds (she did that quite a bit), meanwhile the home care workers were the ones messing up her meds…. Except they didn’t. Someone just wrote down the wrong date in their form.
A lot of this was new to me, so I couldn’t get into it too much with my mother at the time. I needed to get off the phone and write it down, while I still remembered the details!
So all that got passed on to my family.
None of us is happy, and my SIL is planning to write a letter to the provincial government, which runs the home care system, about it. I don’t expect that to make any difference. This sort of thing has been going on for as long as the system has been around.
That taken care of, I spent some time doing some research, then tended to a rose bush. From what I could find, the first recommendation for dealing with scale is to prune away the infected branches. Which would cut away too much of the bush. We can cut it back severely in the fall, and it’ll come back, but not this early in the spring.
We don’t have anything like Neem oil or other suggested sprays, but one site I looked at mentioned dish detergent.
Well, we already started that.
A few other options came up that were not of any use to us, but apparently, using an old tooth brush to take them off can work.
So that’s why I tried.
I then spent the next while searching the rose bush, wetting it down with the soapy water, and using a tooth brush to get rid of the scale. This rose bush is a mass of short thorns, so I used a scrap of rigid foam insulation to stabilize the sections I was working on. The thorns could get pressed into the foam and stay in place, while also protecting my fingers from being ripped to shreds!
Once I got them all (that I could tell), I sprayed it down with a hose, then gave it another dousing with the soapy water.
I’m hoping this actually works.
The other thing we need to do is get that ornamental crab apple tree cut back. Sunlight is another thing to help prevent scale!
While all this was going on, I could hear the sounds of power tools being used. My brother had installed a post near the stand I have our trail cam on. He told me he was going to put in a post, and I was thinking “fence post”. Instead, he dug out a 4×4 post from some of their lumber that they brought over before the house sale, and set that in.
The camera is something like 10 feet off the ground.
He even added a few extras, some decorative, some practical – like a little roof over the camera to keep snow from building up on it. The camera itself is solar powered, and the solar panel could be mounted separately from the camera, unlike my solar powered trail cam, which can just pivot slightly to get a different angle. The solar panel is now mounted at the top of that 10′ or so post.
Which means we don’t need to have our trail cam at the gate anymore!
I’m thinking we can move it to record the cat shelters. I want to see how many “visitors” we get (as I have the critter cam up and have used it to chase out a racoon).
But not now, when I can only use one arm!
My brother was rushing to get things done before the rain started, but the rain wasn’t starting. I kept getting weather warnings on my phone about how, the rain will stop in about half an hour, or the rain will start at… but at most, we got spit on a bit.
Which was driving me nuts, because the garden needs to be watered, but I didn’t do it because we were expecting rain. In fact, we were supposed to get rain from about 1pm to about 2 or 3am!
We didn’t.
Later on, when my daughter and I were walking around with Eyelet, it did start to finally rain…
…only for it to stop soon after we got back inside.
I’ve just been itching to get outside, and watering is really about as much as my arm can handle right now.
Currently, we’re now expecting to get a thunderstorm between 7 and 9 this evening. It’s past 6:30 as I write this, and I see now sign of a storm. All of that seems to be passing to the south of us.
I did manage to finally try out those biscuit mixes I picked up at the dollar store. I ended up using two of the four packets. With the first one, I added a lonely piece of Prosciutto, chopped fine, and a garlic scape, also chopped fine. It was so fast, while the first batch was in the oven, I got another one going – this time with cheese to go with the garlic scape – waiting to add the water at the last minute.
I got enough biscuits out of the packages that I was able to bring a bunch to my brother. He was using the big riding mower, trying to clear the tall grass closer to his equipment, and could neither see nor hear me, so I just tucked it into the trailer for him.
When we did finally connect, he told me which app I needed to download and what I needed to be able to log on.
By then, he really had to hurry to finish and get to my mother’s. There was lots more he wanted to do, but they have decided they will come back next weekend – both of them – and stay the weekend to catch up. My brother was telling me what he really wants to do is to stay here, full time, for 6 months so he can get things done.
I’m practically swooning at the though. There is SO much we simply can’t get done, but he can, he has the equipment for it, and if he doesn’t, he has the ability to get it. With the stuff we’ve got going right now, we’re barely treading water and going into debt to pay for necessary repairs. Stuff like this is why we have credit in the first place, but to have so many things expensive things needing to be done, all at once, is good at all.
Well, we’ll see how things go. While I was at my mother’s, yesterday, she started talking about how she’ll pay to get her car fixed up. Which is great, but we can no longer afford to keep two vehicles insured at the same time. Our insurance has actually gone down, thanks to my excellent driving record (which will not be affected by our insurance claim due to wind damage), but everything else just keeps going up and up and up. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind selling the car, so we can use the space it’s in, in the garage. My brother thinks he can fix it.
Ah, well.
My brother is probably still at her place as I write this. He always goes over her banking with her in detail, leaving the printouts for her, all of which she promptly forgets as she throws away the printouts. She’ll keep some political party donation request letter from 5 years ago, but she won’t keep last month’s bank statements. Which is really, really frustrating for my brother!
Meanwhile, I’ve tried to log into the new security camera, and it says it’s offline, so I think I should go check on it.
Tomorrow, my husband has an appointment at the new pain clinic that’s closer to us. I think my arm will be fine for driving, but I might have issues getting his walker in and out of the truck!
Hmm. According to my weather app, it’s raining right now.
It isn’t.
I should ask my daughters to water the garden while we’re gone. Tomorrow is supposed to be a lovely, cooler day, but no rain.
Well, what we get, we get. Not much we can do about it.
*sigh*
It sure was great to see my brother, though, and we can look forward to seeing them both, next weekend! Yay!
Meanwhile, time for some more painkillers, then one last walkabout outside… and maybe cuddle a few kittens in the process.
Good grief. How is it not even 6:30pm as I start this? It feels like it should be much, much later!
It’s been a long day. 😄
Once again, I was awakened way too early by cat shenanigans. I finally gave up and got up at around 5:30 to top up their kibble and give the hoard access to my room before heading outside to feed the yard cats and do my morning rounds.
Checking on the garden as part of my rounds at this time of year is a bit like Christmas. There seems to be something new, every time! I just came back from doing the evening watering, and there was more new stuff to see, in just the space of about 9 hours!
One of the things we have blooming right now are the ornamental poppies.
Very few of them, this year, but they sure are show stoppers! Those are irises in the background, that have been growing there since before I was born.
Just a few scapes and ripe wild/alpine/whatever-they-are strawberries.
When approaching the low raised bed with most of the tomatoes, interplanted with yellow bush beans, I startled away a bird that had been digging in the dirt. As if cats digging wasn’t bad enough, the birds are, too!
When checking on the damage, I spotted our first yellow bush bean sprouting! I was really happy with this, as these seeds are several years old, and I wasn’t sure any would germinate.
When I was back at the bed to water it this evening, I found almost all the other beans I’d planted in the bed had sprouted while I was gone! I only planted a single bean in each spot, no extras, and at the moment, it looks like just one hasn’t germinated yet.
I didn’t see more corn sprouting in the other bed in the morning, but this evening, I spotted the tips of perhaps a dozen, breaking through. Still no beans in the alternating rows sprouting there, yet.
This morning, I had the usual cats following me around, but I was also joined by an Eyelet!
Who really looks ticked off at getting his picture taken. 😄
The cats really love that grass mulch. It does protect the soil from them a bit, but they do dig it up to use the gardens beds as a litter box, if I’m not there to chase them off. Those collars around the transplants are probably the only things saving them from being flattened by cats rolling in the beds!
In the second image of the above slide show, you can see the cuddle puddle I discovered, just before coming inside.
Adorable, but a concern.
Caramel is in there, cuddling with the kittens. Only the orange tabby, Havarti, is hers. Her other two are still missing. While my first thought was that she took them to the property across the road, I am no longer sure. Every time I got outside, she’s here. Which means if she did take them across the road, they are there alone, not being nursed by her or any of the creche mothers, and not getting any of the cat soup I’ve been giving out specifically for the kittens. I now wonder if they are even still alive. I don’t get it!! Zipper is also still missing.
Later on, as I was preparing to leave for town, I just had to get this picture of Leyendecker.
Chonky boy! Gosh, he’s so big. I don’t just mean he’s a fat cat. He’s just a giant, overall.
He’s also one of the bullies.
I picked up that calming liquid to try, but the instructions aren’t particularly clear. It basically says to add it to their food, no mixing required, and that cats love eating it. Add how? Just… pour it on?
It also sort of assumes feeding one cat directly and individually.
Which is our problem.
How do we dose just the most stressed out and/or aggressive cats?
After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to just add it to their cat soup. It’ll be a very low dose, but basically all the cats would get at least some. Except Potato Beetle. He still won’t eat wet cat food. He’s a chill dude, though, and not one we’d be dosing, anyhow. I honestly can’t remember even seeing him try the cat soup. I use 6 cans of cat food for one batch of cat soup, so this evening, I decided to add one tsp per can (the recommended dose is 1.5 tsp for under 10 pounds, 2 tsp for 10 pounds or over, per day).
We’ll see how it works out.
Meanwhile…
I headed out early because I wanted to remove the remains of the truck box cover, first. We kept wanting to do it, but once the truck is in the garage, there really isn’t a lot of space to move around in. Then we’d forget again.
So today, I got the truck out of the garage, grabbed a tool kit and got to work. It ended up taking way less time than I thought it would. There were just two of one type of clamp on one side, then one each of a different type on both sides. I was fully expecting the nuts to be seized or something, but nope. They came off easily, as did the remaining piece of the box cover.
Once it was done, I just went ahead into town right away, anyhow. I did remember to stop at the post office along the way; I kept forgetting to do it all last week.
Our mail box was completely stuffed.
With fliers.
With the threat of a strike hanging over us, no one is using the mail for anything but junk mail right now. Not even for packages. The threat of a strike alone must be costing Canada Post millions of dollars – and they have already been running in the red for years. People living in cities and larger communities have plenty of alternatives to choose from. People like us, however, are stuck with pretty much only Canada Post. There are a couple of delivery companies that will actually find us and deliver directly to our place (which is impressive, since our physical address doesn’t exist on any maps), or will deliver to the store the post office is in, but they are rarely an option when we place orders online. Right now, a lot of places won’t even take orders. It’s not just Amazon cancelling orders that can only be sent by Canada Post. I’ve noticed some tree nurseries and seed companies have notices on their websites, saying they’ve stopped taking orders completely until the threat of a strike are over. Some say they have found alternative methods and are taking orders again, but for those that don’t have the option, they could well lose their businesses entirely because of Canada Post. Of course, these are almost always the small, independent and family run companies that are most affected, but public sector unions don’t give a rip. It’s insane how bad they’ve become.
So, junk mail is all we’re getting.
While heading into town, I kept a close eye on that oil pressure gauge. At first, it seemed to be back to normal; that half liter of oil we’d put in last night seemed to have made a difference.
And then it didn’t. The pressure kept slowly dropping until it was just barely in the range it’s supposed to be in.
When I got to the garage, the owner was there, so I had a chance to talk to him about the booked oil change, and what was going on. I was honest about the fact that I really couldn’t tell if it was low on oil or not, because I simply can’t see the line, but it did seem to me that it was low. They had done so much work on it when we had the issues before, it really didn’t make any sense for anything to be leaking now, so he was definitely going to check on it for me.
I then asked if they could check the tires, too. We have the one front tire with the slow leak in the valve step that needs to be replaced first, but there are three altogether that need to be done, because the sensor batteries are dead. As for the one that was already done, I told him that it always seems to look low to me. I’d check the pressure and it would be fine, but it still looked low. So he said he would get that checked, too.
I reminded him about the broken handle inside the driver’s side door, and it can only be opened from the outside. We talked a bit about the possibility of getting a new one from a scrap yard or something. He does make use of those for parts and says they usually don’t sell just a handle like that, but the entire door. So it is unlikely to actually save us anything. He did say he would keep it in mind, though.
Not that we’ll be able to get it done, anytime soon.
That done, I turned over the keys and started walking. I was 2 hours early for my appointment, so I had plenty of time to run any errands and have lunch.
I had lunch first, since I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I walked across town towards the marina and decided to stop at a fish and chips place. I don’t normally like fish anything, but they have the best fish and chips anywhere, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been there!
I forgot how massive their portions are. A really great deal for the dollar – a rare thing, these days!
I think next time, I should see if I can get just the fish and skip the fries completely. 😄
This place happens to be next to a Thai store that we rarely get a chance to visit, so after lunch, I went to check it out. My younger daughter, who’s birthday is this month, has a couple of pairs of very unique, very comfortable, pants from this place that she loves. I was thinking of possibly finding her more – after going through some of the other Thai stuff they had. There were some really nice things, but not anything I thought would be good as birthday gifts.
While trying to find a rack with the type of pants my daughter had found, I was approached by the lone saleswoman holding out a dress for me to possibly try.
I was rather amused by the small size of it, but told her I was looking for something for my daughter.
She came back with something even smaller, so I told her my daughter was an adult. She didn’t speak much English, but we managed to communicate.
In the end, she helped me find a sundress that’s actually pants, that looked like it would actually fit my well endowed daughter. So that turned out all right!
After that, I started making my way back towards the garage, stopping at a couple other places along the way. There wasn’t much that I needed, so I wasn’t stuck carrying much during the walk back.
By the time I reached the garage, it was shortly past my actual appointment time. I half expected the truck to be in a bay still, but I found it parked in a different spot outside, so I knew it was done.
The owner was in the office when I got there, but he wasn’t the one who worked on the truck, so he went and got the guy who did. Which turned out to be the same guy who had worked on it last time.
I am so glad I asked them to check the tires.
One of the things this guy had found before was that our tires were starting to wear on the insides, showing that we needed a wheel alignment. That was done along with most of the other stuff at the same time.
In the months since the alignment was done, the worn spots had gotten worse, and were now completely bald on the inside. Something I wouldn’t have been able to see. It was, however, very likely contributing to why both front tires would sometimes be low, even though one of them had had its leaking valve replaced already.
We talked about it for a while, and could confirm it was just additional wear and tear; I’d already had the wheel bearing replaced on the driver’s side, then they did the alignment. They would have spotted any other possible contributing problems at the time.
While, technically, I could still drive on them, this is not something I was going to mess around on, so I asked how much it would cost to replace them.
It’s going to cost over $600, after taxes, for new tires, installation, balancing and labour.
*sigh*
I am thankful that we now have credit cards that we can do stuff like this, but … yikes!
I asked how long it would take for the tires to come in, since they have to order them first, and was told if they ordered them today, they’d be in tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, I’m taking the truck in to the autobody place for them to go over and determine what parts they need for our insurance claim repairs, so I booked the new tires to be installed after that.
Then we talked about the oil change.
It turned out that the oil level really was low. As in, almost half what it should have been. !!! He told me that it was wet all over underneath, so they couldn’t pin point exactly where it was coming from. The leak was so slow, there was no dripping under the truck for me to see. So what they’ve done for now is cleaned it all up so that, when I come back for an oil change again, they would be better able to see where it’s coming from.
If there’s still a leak.
They recommended an oil treatment concentrate to use before then. Every now and then, over the next while (which might be weeks, or months), I’m to check the oil when the engine is cold. Once the level reaches between the “fill” and “full” lines, I’m to add this stuff, instead of more oil. This should improve all the seals and stop any leaks. They both said it works really, really well, and should solve the problem.
That done, I paid the bill, which turned out to be lower than I expected. Especially with the additional product. When I commented on that, the mechanic I was talking to said it looked like the owner, who have left for the day, had given me a deal!
He is so awesome.
While all this was going on, we chatted about other things with the truck. I mentioned the issues we were having with the insurance company and how, because of the things they won’t cover, it’s still going to cost us a lot – and they won’t cover the tail light at all. We’d talked about the broken tail light earlier, when describing the damage to the truck box frame. I told him the insurance guy says it’s from an impact, not from the cover being blown off. Yet when I described what I saw in my mirror when it went flying, the mechanic immediately said that it would have been broken when the box frame was twisted. I agree, but there is impact damage under the tail light. I didn’t hit anything, and that damage wasn’t there when I bought the truck, so all I can think is that maybe someone hit the truck while it was parked in a parking lot, and I just didn’t notice until I checked for damage after the cover was blown off – and I have no way to prove that the tail light cover wasn’t broken before the box cover was blown off.
When he found out they wouldn’t cover the cost of the tail light, the mechanic suddenly got excited and asked which tail light it was. He quickly became disappointed when I told him it was the passenger side. It turned out he had a spare tail light for the same truck as mine, but it was for the driver’s side. He would have let me have it for free, if it had been the right size!
Have I mentioned how much I love our garage? The owner is awesome, and the guys he has working with him are also just fantastic.
So we’ll see how things go with the autobody shop, and their guy has a chance to price out parts.
Once done at the garage, I made a quick stop at the grocery store before heading home. By the time I was done there, I was heavily using the shopping cart as a walker. My hips were starting to really give out. I mentioned that when I messaged my family that I was on my way home, and was pleasantly surprised to find the gate open for me already. After I was done parking in the garage, I was going to leave the couple of bags I had in front of the garage while I went back to close the gate, only to find my daughter already on her way to do it for me!
She is so sweet!
She also noticed and commented on the pretty bag I was carrying, so I asked her if she wanted her birthday present now, or later? 😄😄
She decided, now.
So, once we were inside and everything was put away, I presented her with her gift. She put it on right away, and we were very happy to find it fit just fine – unlike the previous one I picked up that was “one size fits most” that didn’t fit either of us. My daughter has some matching fabric and will be adding gussets to the side seams, but until then, she now has a floofy, flowy, gorgeously patterned pants-dress to wear on those really hot days. It also looks quite beautiful on her, but my daughter always looks beautiful, so that’s no surprise. 😊
Not much later, after taking some pain killers, I headed back outside for my evening rounds, and the evening yard cat feeding. After Caramel apparently moved two of her smaller babies away (or…?), I’m now very concerned that Poirot might do the same, but so far, nope!
She seems quite content to keep her babies close to the house. They are getting so much more active and starting to go further around the house, and using the old kitchen garden as their very own playground – even when I’m watering the beds!
Oh, I’ll have to make a point of heading out after dark and getting some pictures. When I was last at the Walmart, I took advantage of a clearance sale and got a box of 8 solar lights on stakes. Most of them are now in the wattle weave bed – literally in the weave – with a couple in the rectangular bed near the house. They look really nice and, if the price is right, I’d like to get more for other areas around the garden beds.
The cats aren’t the only ones that like the garden beds, or the mulch. Every time I water, there are frogs jumping out all over. The beds with the heavier mulches often have a dozen or more emerging and jumping away from the water!
This evening, however, I spotted a different frog. The usual ones tend to be coloured in browns and greys. Sometimes, I’ll see one that looks copper coloured. What I haven’t seen before it one that was green!
Usually, any green frogs we see are tree frogs, and I haven’t seen any of those this year, yet. The only other native frog that I know of that’s green is the leopard frog, which is now pretty rare to see. This one looks like our typical wood frog, except for the colour. What a beauty!
I am so happy to see so many frogs in the garden this year!
So that was how things went for most of the day.
I do, however, have some concerning updates about my mother.
After what happened yesterday, I updated my siblings in our group chat to let them know what went down.
I got a message from my sister late this afternoon. She had phoned our mother earlier in the day. Apparently, my mother got two med assist visits this morning for some reason.
???
She also said she would try and walk to the grocery store (it’s just a couple of blocks away) to do her own shopping, then have them deliver it. She also had stuff to get at the pharmacy, though, and that’s much further.
I responded by saying I’d gone over there on my one free day, and I’m booked up through to next week (not all of which is stuff away from home, but including time dependent stuff that must get done outside, while the weather is good). My sister said she told my mother that people would be far more willing to help her, if she treated them nicely!
(I’m hoping my sister or my brother can do the shopping for her, but my mother doesn’t like their shopping. I know her list so well, I can pick out exactly what she likes, even when I get things not on her list. They don’t know as well and pick the “wrong” things – which might only be a brand from their local store they shopped at for her, rather than the one next to her place.)
Not long after I got home, I got a call from the home care coordinator.
It was about the double visit this morning.
When the home care aid got to my mother’s, she insisted that someone had already been there and given her her medications. The aid went into the lock box to check. This morning’s medications were still there, and no one had signed the form. Yet my mother insisted, someone had already come and done her meds. The home care workers have the lock box code on their instructions file for my mother. She’s not the only one with a lock box, and there are quite a few different people doing her med assists, so it’s not like any of them are going to be remembering everyone’s lock box combinations, nor is it possible anyone NOT a home care aid would be going into there. Not even my sister has the code for it (my brother is the one who programmed it so, of course, he knows what it is).
I read to her the message I got from my sister, about my mother saying that two people had come to do her morning meds today.
There is no record of any home care aid going to my mother’s place before the one that made the report on my mother saying that someone did.
I told the coordinator that I’d been there yesterday morning, but left very soon after, because of my mother’s behaviour (she understood!), but I was there long enough for my mother to mention no one had shown up on Saturday morning. I hadn’t gone back into the lock box to check if the Saturday morning meds where still there; it never even occurred to me. The coordinator looked at the record for Saturday, and there was nothing about her morning med assist being missed.
She was going to instruct the supper time med assist person to check the bubble pack to see if Saturday morning’s pills were still there.
This morning’s home care aid, the coordinator and I all agreed that it was very unlike my mother to be mixed up about someone coming and giving her her pills, when no one had actually come. Now we have the possibility that she can’t remember someone coming on Saturday morning. This is very concerning! My mother was very prone to messing with her meds, forgetting what they were for, thinking they had been “changed”, etc. But she had never actually forgotten to take them, or thought she’d taken them when she hadn’t.
It’s going to be looked into, and I will be contacted about it later.
It does not seem like my mother would invent (whether she knows it or not) that someone came when they didn’t. Could someone else have come to her place that she mistook for a health care aid? If so, they couldn’t have given her her meds, since they’re locked away.
This is just so bizarre.
Another reminder that my mother really shouldn’t be living on her own. She wants so much to be in a nursing home (a very specific one), and it still seems like she somehow doesn’t “qualify” yet, according to our system.
Whatever they find in their investigation, maybe this will be the final hurdle that will get her into, at the very least, some sort of assisted or supportive living situation.
Assuming there are any spaces available.
*sigh*
There isn’t much we can do until then, which is the most frustrating part. It’s not like any of us can have her move in with us. Either we’ve got our own family health issues to deal with, or lack of accessibility in our homes, or both – it just couldn’t work. She would hate it, anyhow. She knows she needs to have a higher level of care, especially at night, than any of us can give, but she would also go bonkers without the social activities she has access to in her building, now.
Well, it is what it is. We can only deal wit the hand we’ve been dealt, no matter how messed up it is.
My mother certainly isn’t helping herself out, with her behaviour, though!
My start to the day was way earlier than intended, even with needing to get up earlier because I was going to my mother’s!
I’ve been keeping my bedroom door closed overnight, with just Butterscotch and Ginger, because they get bothered by other cats so much. When I can, I include Tiny, who also gets bullied by other cats. Unfortunately, that results in cats scratching at my door frequently during the night. This not only wakes me up, it’s damaging the door. In the time it takes me to get up and get to the door with a spray bottle, whatever cat is doing it is long gone.
This morning, when I found myself up at about 4:30 am, I decided to leave my door open as I tried going back to bed. As soon as the other cats came in, though, the fighting, growling, scratching (sometimes even on the scratch pad or tower), hairball horking, and jumping all over the place kicked right in!
I finally gave up and got up well before my alarm was due to go off. I topped up the cat food bowls in the dining room, mostly just making noise to get their attention, since they still had plenty of food, and managed to get most of them distracted from destruction in my room.
I headed outside next to feed the yard cats. I didn’t see Zipper anywhere which, after what happened with Kale, has me concerned, but then I didn’t see some of the other kittens, either. I find myself wondering if Caramel is trying to move her babies to the farm across the road from us. Yesterday, I caught her encouraging one of her kittens to follow hear, while heading in that direction. No one lives there permanently, but there is still the house, barn and many outbuildings. I picked up the kitten and brought it back to the sun room, just to be on the safe side. I will know better when I do the evening feeding, if we are missing some kitties.
Once the furballs were fed, I did the rest of my rounds, including checking the garden beds. They did not need watering this morning, which was good, since I didn’t have time to do it before leaving.
The transplants are still looking really rough, but that’s not stopping them from blooming! Especially the winter squash.
These are just one variety in the picture, but all three varieties in this bed have blossoms. Almost all are male flowers, though I did see one female flower bud. I should probably prune all these flowers off right now, which should send more energy to plant growth rather than flower blooming.
I was also very happy to have my first garlic scape harvest!
Just a few were ready for picking, but we will have more, soon! On the way back to the house, I grabbed a few chive blossoms, too. I included some of each in my breakfast. 😊
I headed back out later and harvested some rhubarb and lettuce to bring to my mother, before changing and heading out. Expecting today to be warmer, I decided to wear my new caftan style summer dress. It’s bright red with bold patterns in green, yellow, white and black. My mother has seen me in it before and laughed at me, saying it looked like I was wearing pajamas (she meant night gown, but I think she forgot the word in English). So I knew I’d get some sort of blowback for wearing it. I also wore my new shoes in matching red, and the sparkly gold hat my daughter bought for me, to add to my sparkly hat collection. I always wear a baseball style hat – I feel naked without one! – when I head outside, and have work hats and going out hats. The sparkly ones are my going out hats.
Before I left, I went over to my daughter as she was making herself breakfast, struck a pose and asked, how do I look? I pretty much never wear such bright colours or patterns, and wear dresses even less often. My daughter loved it, then laughed and said my mother would have things to say!
So, I did know at least some of what was coming.
The plan was to take my mother to the lab for her bloodwork when they opened at 9, or after her morning med assist. I seemed to remember that the morning home care worker came just before 9am, but I wasn’t sure. I had told my mother I would be there between 8:30 and 9. After the lab work, I would do her grocery shopping, then had my own errands to run.
I arrived shortly after 8:30 and delivered the rhubarb and lettuce. My mother was quite happy with that.
Then I settled at the table to get her lock box and remove the bloodwork form for this month. That’s when my mother noticed my bright red shoes.
She somehow managed to compliment me on the shoes, while laughing and insulting me for the dress, at the same time.
Then she started in on the hat, which I’ve already worn to her place, quite a few times. That style, she told me, was for men. Because it had a visor. Men’s hats have visors. I pointed out, it’s gold and sparkly, so it’s hardly a “men’s hat” (not that it couldn’t be, but my mother wouldn’t think so).
She then started to tell me, people dress so strangely these days!
😂😂
I told her, it’s just styles. They change.
All of this is pretty typical of my mother and pretty expected.
Meanwhile, I got the form out and she ordered me to give her her pills. I had already confirmed that the home care aide hadn’t arrived yet, so I told her no, the aid will be here soon. It’s not even 9:00 (it was coming up on 8:45 by then, so I’d been there for less than 10 minutes). She then started going on about the times and eventually mentioned that no one had shown up for Saturday morning, so that meant they weren’t going to come today.
????
This was the first I’d heard of this. I told her, if that happens, call me! If they haven’t shown up by 10, then she needs to call me so I can come in.
By 10? They’re supposed to be here at 8.
???
She was recently given a new 2 week schedule, and it was taped to her wall, so I checked it. The schedule includes both the days and dates, then the scheduled med assist times for each day. As I started looking at it, she berated me for looking at the wrong date, so obviously, she could see the schedule, even with her macular degeneration. I found the right date, then pointed out to her that all the scheduled visits for each day are at the same times. Mornings are from 9-9:10. Afternoons, 6:55-7. I forget the last one, but it was also a 5 minute visit. All the times were the same for the two weeks on the schedule, along with the names of who was supposed to do the visits.
My mother’s response was, they changed it?
She thought they were supposed to come at 8, even though she could see the schedule, taped to the wall right in front of where she sits at her dining table.
She still demanded I give her her medications. I said no. They have forms to fill out. I’m not going to mess with their system.
I was berated for wanting to follow the rules.
Once the lock box was set aside, we settled in to just chat while we waited, and I mentioned how hot and humid it was. She thought I meant outside, and I told her it’s hot and humid outside, too, but I had meant inside. My mother doesn’t feel the heat at all, these days.
She didn’t understand the word humid, though, and thought I meant the smoke. I told her there wasn’t any smoke visible when I came in, but that would just be because of the wind direction. The big fire across the lake was still burning out of control.
That’s when things went downhill, fast.
She started talking about how terrible it was that “they” were starting fires. And by “they”, my mother basically means not-white people. Sometimes she seems to mean Muslims, sometimes First Nations, sometimes just any of the recent imports. When I pointed out that not all of these fires are arson, and many are in isolated regions, where there are no roads and no people, she told me that “they” would still go there! If they can burn churches, they would burn forests, too.
Now, as an aside, we do have real problems with this. In past years, the RCMP have uncovered plots from people connected to Islamic terrorist groups that specifically included starting many forest fires. There is also the issue of imports (I will not insult genuine immigrants by calling the imports, immigrants). Canada’s federal government has allowed well over 800,000 imports in just the first 4 months of 2025. That’s roughly equivalent to the population of the city of Winnipeg. This while going on about how they’re going to cut back on how many people they let in because of the housing crisis. These are not people undergoing the requisite checks and balances normally required during the immigration process, and there is a much larger problem if human trafficking involved, but that’s a whole different topic.
There is also the real problem of churches being vandalized and burned. The number is well over 100 now, and this started after the mass graves hoax that our former Prime Dictator, T2, actually condoned, even as he condemned it. He literally did both in the same sentence. Many of these are blatant hate crimes, but they’re not being investigated. What my mother doesn’t understand is that many of these churches that were vandalized and burned because of the mass graves hoax are actually churches on reserves. A lot of Fist Nations people are Christian, and those churches are incredibly important to their communities.
My mother, however, can’t grasp that. In her mind, white people are Christian. Which makes me wonder what she really thinks about the very dark priest from India serving her church right now! Or the Filipino family with their delightful gaggle of children that attends her church.
So that’s a bit of the background on that.
I tried to tell my mother, she’s talking about two different things. Yes, the church burnings are a problem, but that is not connected to the wildfires. It’s fire season. Some fires are started by stupid people throwing their cigarette butts out the window, yes, there is sometimes arson, but mostly these are lightning strikes. There simply aren’t people around to start most of the fires where they are.
She then started to accuse me of “protecting” “them”, saying “I’m not stupid” (meaning, she knows what is REALLY going on, but I don’t) and that I was just like…
At that point she used a word I didn’t understand. It was one of her made up words that she comes up with, like referring to women doctors as “psheepshee”. I had to ask several times, what was she talking about, before she said she meant the home care worker she’d had an incident with before. This home care worker had made a request to not be assigned to my mother anymore because of my mother’s racist comments, so we were all surprised that she was back. My mother had acknowledged she did not behave properly, though I don’t know that she ever apologized directly to this woman. Clearly, based on what my mother was saying now, any apology she might have made was not at all genuine!
So there she was saying I was “protecting” people just like this… whatever the word was… home care worker. (Granted, I would also have a problem with someone who said she supported pro-terrorist protesters, but we don’t know exactly what went down, since they both have told different stories about the incident.) All for pointing out that she was talking about two different things, and not all fires are arson.
Then I guess my mother remembered that my husband is Metis, because she suddenly asked, “is there any white blood left in you?”
…
At that point I told her, flat out, she was being disgusting, and when did she get all this hate in her heart?
She then started crossing herself, and I called her out on that particular behaviour, too. That led to her questioning my faith and making some other inappropriate comments.
Which is when I told her, I was done.
I put the paperwork back in the lock box and left. I was not going to take her for her lab work, nor do her grocery shopping, after that.
While I put the form away, my mother just sat there, silently, with a very familiar smug smile on her face that she puts on when she is utterly convinced of her righteousness.
I was not going to put up with her abuse.
I was there for less than 15 minutes.
At some point, I’ll need to go back and get her to the lab and do her grocery shopping, but not today.
Once in the truck, I updated the family very briefly – both at home and in the group chat with my siblings. I then headed out to do what was supposed to be my afternoon errands, and went to the nearest Walmart.
I just got interrupted by a cat altercation that brings me to one of the things I found at Walmart to try. A “calm & content”, “liquid vet” solution. Chicken flavoured. It’s meant to be fed to a stressed out cat during meal time, with doses based on weight. We have several cats that seriously need to be de-stressed! It has a 100% money back guarantee, so we’ll see how it works. I also picked up a couple of sprayers for the hose; I only need one right now, but with how quickly they seem to break down, I got an extra. I did get what I hope are higher quality ones.
The shopping done and the truck loaded, I just started to leave the parking lot when my phone rang.
It was home care.
I shuddered to think they needed me to do the morning med assist. It well past 10 by then. It turned out that my mother had called them because no one had showed up for her morning med assist. The scheduler had checked and confirmed that the home care aid was running behind, and that she would be going to my mother’s next. I briefly let her know I’d been there earlier and had to leave because of my mother’s behaviour. Fair warning that she might not be at her best when the home care aid arrived. The scheduler appreciated the warning.
I was just glad I wasn’t going to have to go back to my mother’s today.
I could finally head home, which was an uneventful drive except…
Why was my oil pressure gauge on the low side like that?
It hasn’t been that long ago that a leaking gasket was discovered, and that’s why we had been losing oil. Because of where it was leaking, we never saw any oil under the truck, nor have we been seeing any lately. We had also still had issues with the MAF sensor, so we had that replaced, the engine cleaned and an oil change done, all at once. It’s been running fine, ever since.
I did confirm that, based on the mileage on the sticker, we are due for an oil change, though the onboard computer says we’re still good to go.
Once at home and the truck unloaded, I grabbed some paper towel and checked the oil level. Which is incredibly frustrating. I honestly can’t tell where the oil level is. It either looks all wet, or not at all. I do wish the dip stick could be a light colour, rather than basically the same colour as the oil! I eventually concluded it was a bit low and added my last half liter of oil that I had in the truck and checked again. I found it even harder to see the oil level at that point.
*sigh*
So I called the garage and told them what I was seeing. They couldn’t fit me in today, but I now have an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. They’ll do an oil change and check for a leak.
Meanwhile I had a message from my daughter. The autobody place called about our insurance claim while I was gone, so I called them back.
The insurance company has agreed to the off-market box cover that would fit our truck, that the shop had managed to find. We would be paying the 30% “betterment” cost, on top of our deductible. The guy at the repair department needed to look over the truck, though. I now have an appointment for Thursday afternoon. He’ll look over the damage, including the broken tail light, so he knows exactly what parts he will need to order. The insurance company says they won’t cover the tail light because they don’t think it was caused by the box cover being ripped off the truck and twisting the frame in the process, and I have no way to prove otherwise. The autobody place might be able to find a cheaper off-market one for us, though. Otherwise, we could go to the garage and ask if they can find one from a scrap yard, instead. These things are pretty expensive, new.
Once the guy has the information he needs, they’ll be able to look it all up and give an exact cost to us, including the deductible. We can then decide whether to go ahead with the repair and replacement or not. Budget is very tight right now, but my older daughter has said she can help out.
All of this, and it was just past noon by the end of the call with the autobody place.
The Re-Farmer 