family

“You’re mother is dying.”

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

No.

No, she isn’t.

But that’s what she told me when I got a call from her this morning.

This is starting to become a common refrain, unfortunately.

My schedule for today included heading to my mother’s nice and early, so I could drive her to the city. She had an afternoon appointment for another eye injection *shudder* to try and stop the bleeding of her wet macular degeneration and maybe – just maybe – improve her vision in that eye.

I tried to get more information about what was going on, but just got repeats of her usual. Her breathing. She only got 2 hours of sleep, and it’s because of her pills (it’s not because of her pills). Her chest pains (acid reflux). Pain in general. Even her incontinence. She’s convinced she is dying.

On the one hand, I get it. I totally get it! She feels like crap, and the idea of driving 1 1/2 hours to an appointment that would take at least an hour, then another 1 1/2 hours drive back, would seem overwhelming.

She’s 93 years old with busted up knees.

Yeah, I get it.

On the other hand, she has no understanding of just how good she is doing. I mean, she’s really amazing. At this age, her sister was already in the nursing home, being shuttled around in a wheelchair, and falling deep into dementia for several years. There are people far younger than her that are doing far worse.

Plus, canceling and appointment like this at the last minute is a big deal. There is only one place that does these treatments, and if she wants to retain any vision in that eye (she did say she was noticing an improvement), she needs these treatments.

Her response was, what does it matter, if she’s going to die, anyway?

She tried to guilt me, saying that I didn’t believe her. I told her, it’s not that I don’t believe her, in how she feels. I’m trying to understand why she thinks she’s dying. Because, really, there is nothing new in her complaints. That’s what I keep trying to get to. What is happening that’s different, that’s convincing her she’s about to die any at any minute.

In the end, she said she wasn’t going to say anymore and was going to say good bye, then she hung up.

At which point, I messaged my brother and his wife to let them know the situation. They are so busy right now, it’s the last thing they need to deal with, but they needed to know.

In the end, I decided that I would go to my mother’s place, anyways, and talk to her in person. If she still refused to go, I would phone the clinic and cancel the appointment from her place.

I meant to leave early, but so many cats were following me to the car, I had to ask one of my daughters to very noisily feed them.

Yes, they’d already been fed.

Including sweet Gouda. What a lovely kitty he is!

It was Syndol that would not stop following me to the car. I kept moving him away, and he kept coming back. I finally had to carry him all the way to the house, where he finally noticed the kibble and went to eat.

So much for leaving early, but I was at least on the road at the time I was intending to be.

While I was driving, my phone started ringing. I couldn’t answer, of course, but I’d told my brother that I would be on the road, and I figured it might be home.

It was.

When he couldn’t reach my by phone, he sent a quick message. He’d phoned her, they had a good talk, and she will go. He called her in between meetings at work, so he had to be brief. By the time I parked and could check messages, my SIL added that my brother had finally told our mother that they were selling their place, just so I would be aware.

So when I got to my mother’s apartment, she was up and ready and waiting.

She then launched into giving me all sorts of instructions on what to do and where to find things when she died. I honestly think she expected to die during the drive in.

She did mention my brother’s call, but as she was giving me instructions, including about her finances, she brought up my brother, and how he has the farm, but he wants her money, too. I sold her, the only person that wants her money is our vandal, and reminded her of the legal steps my brother had taken to protect her from our vandal. She just scoffed, then said that my sister was the only one who didn’t care about my mother’s money.

Which is weird, but she does like to try and play us against each other.

I’d worked out a time when we had to be on the road by, to get to her appointment, and we ended up leaving almost 20 minutes earlier.

She did walk very slowly to the car, lots of panting and pausing. It was a struggle for her to get into the car, and then she sat there, panting.

She really did play it up.

Her struggle to get into the car was very genuine, though. If we were using the truck, I probably would have had to practically pick her up to help her in!

She made a comment about her breathing as I was getting in, but then pretty much stopped the act at that point.

As we were driving, she started telling me things like, she’d talked to some of her neighbours in her building, and one of them had the same thing she did (at least that’s how my mother understood it), she didn’t go anything, and it went away. Then my mother told me about a Jehovah’s Witness that used to come visit (how many decades ago was this???) who talked about losing vision until she prayed and God healed her, and her vision had been fine ever since. She also told me about how, years ago (how many years?) she remember she had black spots floating around in her vision. She never went to the doctor, never did anything different, and they went away.

All I could say, really, was that these are all different things. That’s great for them, but that has nothing to do with you’re specific situation.

Also, for someone who was complaining about getting only a couple of hours sleep, she was very talkative and alert. I suggested she could try napping during the drive, but she wanted to enjoy the scenery…

Anyhow.

She told me she’d gone to bed at around 11, woke at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep, no matter what, and it was because of her pills. I told her, we know it’s not the pills. It could be anything. Even just busy brain or stress. Oh, but you don’t know what I’ve lived through…

???

Eventually, she brought up about my brother selling their property, and that they were selling it privately, not through an agency.

I’m not sure what reaction she expected from that.

I reminded her, I had told her, my brother is preparing for retirement.

She did bring up about him not selling the farm – the property we are on – and I told her, he can’t sell it. That was part of my father’s will.

She dropped that, too.

Overall, though, the conversation during the drive actually went pretty well. She kept commenting on the traffic. She still seems to think traffic should be like when she and my father lived in the city until the mid 60’s.

I’m glad we left as early as we did, though. It’s construction season.

If we’d left when I originally planned, we should have arrived about half an hour early. Leaving when we did, we should have arrived as much as 45 minutes early.

We got there 10 minutes before her appointment.

They took her in almost immediatley.

The next while spent getting her eye dilated while the tech tried to get images and video of it.

Normally, during these tests, they ask you to focus on a green X, or a picture of a house, or some such thing, in the middle of the device over the eye they are looking at.

With macular degeneration, that’s not possible. She can’t see the middle of anything.

So the tech instead set up a tiny green light on an adjustable arm in front of her left eye, and asked my mother to try and focus on that.

My mother kept getting distracted.

What do you mean a green light? It’s white?

There’s a dark spot in the middle.

The light isn’t on…

After a number of attempts to get video, I finally started to explain, they just needed her to look at that spot. It didn’t matter what the colour was, or anything else. It’s the location she needs to focus on.

I think she finally understood that, but by then, the tech was done!

She was then sent to a waiting room before the next stage, but the doctor requested one more image. He needed a specific location photographed, so he could compare with an image taken last time.

That, at least, was quick!

We do have good news.

The bleeding in her eye seems to have stopped. There is still a bit of blood in there, but mostly there is scar tissue right in the middle of her vision.

Then he asked her if she wanted to continue treatment!

She deferred making a decisions (which is her usual way), wanting him to make the decision for her. Which he couldn’t do, of course. He did say he would recommend still getting the treatments since, if they are stopped now, the bleeding might resume. I finally said we should at least do a treatment today, and we decide about further treatment later.

Meanwhile, my mother launched into how she’d had these black spots floating in her eyes, (I told her, this is not the same thing, and the doctor repeated that) and they went away on their own, etc. The doctor told her, this is not going to go away on its own.

She dropped the subject.

So they went ahead with the treatment, with a light freezing of the eye, adding antiobiotic drops, and finally the main freezing. That one needed 7 minutes, and my mother was asked to hold a tissue over her eye and just relax for a while.

As we were waiting for the freezing, the doctor and the tech – plus a third person that was in training – started looking at other files. They spoke quietly, but I could hear bits and pieces, and could see some of the images they were looking at.

All I can say is…

My mother is doing really great! She is there at a time when she can actually get treated, and the damage is relatively mild. At one point, I could hear them lamenting that there was absolutely nothing they could do to help one particular patient. She had simply waited too long to get checked. As quiet as they spoke, I could still hear the pain in their voices.

The doctor had a timer going, so they were soon back working on my mother. She got her injection, and was reminded that she will have redness, which is normal, but if there’s any pain, she is to come back right away.

As for the next treatments, he told her she no longer needs to come back in 4 weeks, but maybe 4 or 5 weeks. I checked my calendar and saw that my husband is rebooked for his CT Scan in 5 weeks, so it would have to be 4 weeks for my mother.

The doctor was very understanding about the long drive in, and that the next treatment would be winter driving. There is simply no other clinic like this that’s closer. One is planned for the town we are closest to, but that’s all it is at this point – plans.

Once he was done, that was it. We just needed to book the next appointment, then go.

By that point, we were both hungry – my mother hadn’t even eaten breakfast! – but neither of us were up to trying to find a place to eat in the city. We talked about where to go in her town and she wasn’t enthusiastic about her choices. Then I suggested we stop at the gas station where I could pick up her favourite fried chicken and wedges.

She was quite excited over that idea!

So we had a good drive home – traffic was a lot lighter, and we were no longer in any construction zones.

I picked up the food and got her home. She was pretty famished by then! I got enough that she could have another meal out of it later.

After that, there were a few things she needed help with. One was a letter from the government that she didn’t understand. Another was helping her write out a check to pay for her ambulance bill, from her trip to the ER a month or two ago. It didn’t come with a return envelope, though – they expect people to pay via etransfer, credit or debit. She didn’t have a suitable envelope, so I ended up taking that home to get ready to mail, which I will do tomorrow.

As we were talking, she mentioned that she needed her laundry done. She hasn’t been up to doing it herself, and it’s been piling up. She said she hoped to “hire” my sister to do it – but my sister and her husband are coming home from out of province tomorrow, and tomorrow is my mother’s laundry day on the building’s schedule.

I also noticed, her fridge was looking empty.

But she never asked me for help. I even asked if she needed shopping, but she said the only thing she needed was milk.

Okay…

That was it!

I left soon after. I’ve got her check ready to mail and have my own parcel to pick up at the post office.

I really, really need to get more work done outside. Tomorrow was going to be my first day in quite a long time where I didn’t need to go anywhere, and could get back to it.

*sigh*

I’ve just arranged to go over to my mother’s tomorrow, to do her laundry and, if she puts a list together for me, her grocery shopping, too.

The long range forecast has changed, again. The snow I was seeing in the beginning of November seems to have gone away for the most part. We’ll even have some warmish days. If the weather holds, I should still be able to get things done.

We shall see.

Meanwhile, we’ve had no word from the garage about the truck, which means no one has had a chance to look at it yet.

I also had a chance to talk to my brother this evening, and got to hear the rest of how his call with her went. He had so little time to make the call, he basically just told her, go to the appointment, and that I was already on my way to get her. When he mentioned that yes, they are selling their property, she launched into her usual lecture about how the value of land only ever goes up, etc. He just let it slide and had to tell her, he needed to get back to work.

When I talked to him this evening, it was after he’d had a very long day at work (he starts at 5am), and was at the property, packing up shed contents. They’ll be coming out here this weekend with the stuff they are keeping, but they are also sending stuff to auction.

It’s a huge job, that’s for sure!

So we will be at least seeing my brother and their friend on the weekend, with trailer loads. I honestly don’t know where he’s going to be putting things at this point! Most of the sheds here can’t be used anymore.

I’m sure he’s got a plan, though. He always does!

So that’s been my day today.

How was yours? 😁😁

The Re-Farmer

A pretty good day

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I didn’t get as much done today as I’d hoped, but I got the important stuff done, and that’s what matters.

As usual, my day started with feeding the outside cats before doing my morning rounds. Since I was going to be helping my mother with errands today, my rounds included making sure things were set up in the truck for the day. By the time I was done my rounds, the cats had polished off all the warm, softened kibble they now get in the mornings, and were starting to settle into their cuddle puddles!

Like this one, near the heat lamp. Not directly under it – I expect to see more of that when things get really cold! – but close.

There is one adult cat in this pile.

That old feed bag, which is stuffed with packing material, had been on the nearby shelf for them to use as a bed while looking out the window, but it kept getting knocked down, so we’ve just left it. They quite like it there. Underneath is mostly bare concrete.

Since my mother was getting her Meals on Wheels delivery today, I didn’t have to leave as early as I usually do, and had my own lunch early.

I still got there early enough for us to have a bit of a visit before her Meals on Wheels was delivered. As we were talking, she showed me this.

If you click through to the next image, you’ll see the other side.

My mother had been going through her things, trying to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep, when she found it.

She told me that when she was in the hospital, in labour with me, there was a nun who visited and prayed with her. After I was born and my mother was ready to go home, she held me while my mother got into the car, then put me in her arms.

No car seats, or even seat belts, back then! 😄

This nun had also given my mother this… Hmmm… I don’t know what it’s called. Not a medallion, of course, but a laminated paper version of a medallion.

Now, she wanted me to have it!

I gratefully accepted it. What a connection to my own birth! I now have it in my wallet, under one of the plastic windows, so I can see it. I’m amazed she managed to hang on to something so small, all these decades!

Soon after, my mother’s Meals on Wheels arrived. She is so very happy with these meals. Today, it was salmon with mushroom rice, cooked broccoli with other vegetables I couldn’t make out, and cream of potato soup. There was a packet of tartar sauce for the salmon and soy sauce for the rice. For desert, there was a cube of bright green Jello, with what I think was pineapple in it. She quite enthusiastically enjoyed her meal!

After she was done and we were having tea together, I asked about her shopping list and got a bit of a surprise.

She didn’t need a grocery shopping trip anymore.

Yesterday was a nice day, and she decided to go ahead an walk to the grocery store. It’s just a couple of blocks, but she insists on taking the “short cut” through the empty lot – almost a field – between her building and the street the grocery store is on. I just shake my head that she insists on doing this, because it’s “shorter”. For starters, it’s not level and doesn’t get mowed regularly, so it would be rough to go over with her walker. She would also have to go around some fences and a building to get to it. In reality, the “shorter” path probably isn’t saving her anything. My concern is that it increases her chances of falling, but she insists that her “helper” (her walker) will prevent that.

Plus, it’s trespassing, but I don’t think anyone cares. As I understand it, the owner lives in the city and doesn’t even come out to mow it. The town does it every now and then, then bills the owner for it.

When she got to the grocery store, who should she run into?

Our vandal and his wife.

*sigh*

At least his wife was with him!

Long story short, they offered to bring her stuff home for her – it was too late in the day for the grocery store to do a delivery – so she was able to do a larger shopping trip. I don’t know which of their many vehicles they had, but when the time came, they didn’t have room for her walker, so our vandal drove her home with the groceries while his wife walked the walker over.

One thing my mother noted: his wife has never, ever, said anything negative about me or my brother. I told my mom, I don’t think his wife has any idea what our vandal is still doing. He certainly wouldn’t have left a voice mail message like the one he recently left on my brother’s phone, if his wife were around to hear him say those horrible things.

So my mother got her grocery shopping done, and didn’t need me to do it today. I only wish she understand that, while his wife may be genuine, our vandal doesn’t do stuff like this out of the kindness of his heart. It seems, no matter how bad he gets, my mother will always make excuses for him. But my brother, who has never been anything but kind and helpful to her, has pulled her butt out of the fire many times out of the years, and takes such good care of, she treats like crap.

How does that make sense?

Anyhow.

She did still need to go to the bank, plus she needed to get her prescriptions and a couple of things at the pharmacy. While she setting up to leave, I went out to get her walker ready; she keeps it parked outside her door, under a tiny corner shelf that all the apartments have. Like most people living there, she has a little display set up on it. Usually, religious in nature.

That’s when I saw something unfortunate.

Part of her display was a small card with a picture of a famous painting of Jesus on it.

It was torn in half.

My first thought was, our vandal did it as he left. One of the things he constantly has said to her, since my late brother died and more so after my father died, is that she will never go to heaven to be with her husband and her son, because she didn’t leave this property to him, like they would have wanted (which they most certainly did NOT want). Knowing she is deeply religious, he would often invoke God in some way in the many abusive messages he left on her answering machine until my brother finally got his number blocked.

When I brought it in to show my mother, though, she told me it was done by one of her neighbours. ??

My mother is not happy with some of the “homeless people” and “aboriginals” that have recently moved into her building. Apparently, one of them has behavioral issues, and tearing up my mother’s picture of Jesus would be something she would do.

My mother didn’t actually see it done, though, so who knows. My mother used to have a card with her name above the peep hole on her door that disappeared, and she thinks the same person did it. Unfortunately, my mother has a bad habit of accusing people of things, with no actual evidence for it, so there’s no way to know what actually happened.

She then asked me to put the pieces back outside her door, so others could see the sort of things this person (or whoever it was) will do.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

We were soon on our way out and on our way. My mother really struggled to get up in the truck but, my goodness, she manages! When we got this truck, I thought for sure she would never be able to get into it, yet there she is!

Even so, she was only up to going into the bank. Once at the pharmacy, she stayed in the truck while I went in to get her prescription and other items. Once I knew, more or less, how much it would be, I went to the truck for her loyalty card and cash, then went back in to pay for her items.

The staff at the pharmacy are quite familiar with my shopping for my mother by now. 😄

That done, I took my mother home. She told me she would have wanted to go somewhere else, like to a restaurant, just for a change of scenery, but didn’t want to be getting in and out of the truck any more than she had to.

She was pretty tired by then, anyhow, so I didn’t stay too much longer.

I remembered to grab the extra plumbing parts and pieces my daughter didn’t need to use when working on the bathroom taps, so after a quick stop at the feed store to get a 40 pound bag of kibble, I headed to the two store we got the parts from to return them. The one in the town nearest us is also near our usual grocery store, so I made a quick stop there. From there, it was a quick stop at the post office, then finally, home.

Where I found this to greet me as I headed to the house.

They were more than eager for their evening feeding, and prowling like ravenous lions! 😄

I took care of that as soon as I could. 😊

One of the things in the mail was something from the hospital my husband is supposed to get a sleep test done in. He is looking to switch from a CPAP to a BiPAP. His CPAP is due to be replaced. It is 90% covered by insurance, but that is done by paying for it first, then submitting the receipt. For the price of a CPAP, we could have hired a plumber to fix the taps and replace the hot water tank with a new one, and still had money left over. Plus, he’s having a hard time getting replacement hoses. Our province covers the cost of a BiPAP, though. To get one, he has to be reassessed, and that’s why he’s been referred to this hospital.

What he got in the mail was their questionnaire about his health history. Which was fine until he got to the end when, as he put it, he almost cried.

They wanted a list of his medications, and doses.

He cheated.

He cut off the list that’s on his bubble packs to put in with the form, and wrote “see attached”. Then he just had to add the “take as needed” medications, and his injections, to the list.

Tomorrow is Saturday and our post office is closed, but I’ll still make sure to get it in the mail box right away.

The next thing he’ll get is a telephone appointment. We’ll see if they need him to actually come in to do a sleep test or not. When he was first diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, we were living in this province, and there was an actual sleep research lab at the same hospital that now has the provinces cardiac clinic. I don’t think there is a sleep research lab anymore, and it looks like they no longer have people actually spending the night in the lab, hooked up to various monitors, while two technicians observed all night. When my mother was tested for sleep apnea, my SIL picked up the test machine in the city and I met her part way to get it. When my mother was ready to go to bed, I brought it over and helped her put on the hoses and heart monitors. I then came back in the morning to get the machine and delivered it to a Medigas office in the city for data analysis.

Which is more or less what I expect will happen with my husband, this time around.

Hopefully, this will all get processed fairly quickly. I think a BiPAP would be better for my husband. They weren’t available when my husband was first diagnosed.

So I didn’t end up getting anything done outside, like I’d hoped, but that’s okay. The important things got done, so that makes it a good day!

The Re-Farmer

From good to not so good!

/ Re-Farmer / 16 Comments

Yesterday was such a good day! I’m just so happy to have finally got the cat isolation shelter to the point that we can use it (though it still doesn’t have a latch on the ramp-door).

I didn’t over exert myself.

Honest. I didn’t.

Working on the shelter was mostly a lot of back and forth to get things cut and nailed or screwed into place. I wasn’t doing anything heavy or strenuous.

Yet, apparently, I overdid it.

I was in bed, just finishing my devotions, when I tried to roll over.

Thankfully, I still had my phone in my hand when the leg cramps hit. I was just able to get so I could sit on the side of the bed, but couldn’t go more than that. I was able tap “help” to my older daughter, and that was it.

She didn’t need more information to know what was going on. Which is good, yet not good, since it shows now often I’ve been getting these, lately.

I’ve had some bad Charlie horses before but, this time, it hit me in both thighs, on all sides and severe enough for pain to shoot down into my calves and up into my hips.

I couldn’t bend, I couldn’t straighten, I could barely use my arms to shift. Even taking the ibuprofen and magnesium my daughter brought me was difficult.

She stayed with me until the painkillers kicked in. Even that was weird. First my right leg, then my left, just suddenly relaxed, with a jolt. Even so, my daughter had to lift me legs for me so I could get back into bed, because the muscles were quivering so much.

As I slowly recovered, and I was able to talk, my daughter mentioned looking up the cause of these. She thought at first it might be lack of hydration, but she knows I stay on top of that. Her next thought was perhaps a lack of salt.

My initial reaction was no, but then I realized that yesterday, I’d eaten almost no salt all day.

It’s the only thing either of us could think of that might apply.

She ended up bringing me a few rock crystals of Himalayan pink salt for me to chew on.

I did eventually fall asleep, but it was many hours before my thigh muscles felt anywhere close to normal. It’s almost 8pm as I write this, and they still feel trembly at times.

My older daughter took care of doing the softened kibble feeding of the outside cats this morning for me, so I could try to sleep in – or at least stay in bed longer.

In the end, if was cats going bonkers, chasing the lady beetles that have gotten inside, that had me giving up on trying to get more sleep.

With the various plumbing issues we have right now, we’ve all been slowly chipping away at dishes and cooking as little as possible. The kettle has been kept going pretty much all the time. Between washing ourselves, using boiled water to soak the outside cats’ kibble, and just general clean up, we’ve taken to simply filling it and setting it to boil so there’s at least warm water available for the next person who needs it.

I did eventually make it outside. It started to rain, so I moved the shallots that were hanging on the high raised bed frame to cure, into the garage. Another couple of days, and they will be braided and brought into the root cellar.

I also got a heat lamp set up in the sun room, as the nights are going to be going below freezing soon. I was going to put the second one in the isolation shelter, ready to be plugged in as needed, but I will have to find a way to secure it better. I want it to be hanging from the centre of the roof, but I will need a little step ladder to reach. 😄 So that will wait for now. I did make sure both sliding panels were closed, though, to keep the weather out of the upper level. There is just the ramp door to get in and out.

The cats quite like going in there!

It had been my plan to clean up and put things away in the garage, now that the isolation shelter no longer needs to be in there, so we can finally park the truck in the garage again.

That didn’t happen!

Maybe tomorrow.

This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and we do have a turkey thawing out. It’ll be ready to be cooked tomorrow, so that’s when we’ll do what we can for a thanksgiving dinner, even if we don’t end up eating it until much later.

My daughters emptied out the wardrobe of my husband’s things – mostly his old office clothes, which he has little occasion to wear these days. They all went into the laundry, and my daughters got the wardrobe upstairs.

Which means my husband now has access to the closet in his room.

We can also bring back his tiny medication fridge, and the table it sits on, back into his room, though that will be done tomorrow.

He’s going to need some sort of small shelf, though.

While I was outside, my mother called. After a bit of telephone tag, we finally connected.

I’m glad to say that she has been really happy with her Meals on Wheels deliveries. She is really enjoying the food, and not having to cook it herself! This is going to work out much better for her than the bulk meal prep that home care offers.

“One of the ladies” told her that the hospital in town has a new doctor, and she told me we should make an appointment with her.

My mother is STILL talking about changing doctors, while she’s in the middle of being assessed for placement in a nursing home or supportive living. If I thought it would actually help any, sure – if nothing else, it would mean her current doctor won’t have a racist AF patient. The problem is, my mother is never happy with any doctor she has. This is a female doctor, and my mother doesn’t think women can be good doctors, just nurses, so we already know she won’t be happy with any female doctor. Even with male doctors, if they don’t tell her what she wants to hear, she’ll find something about them that disqualifies them in her mind. And if there isn’t something there, she’ll invent something. Even doctors she starts out liking, she’ll turn on them in a heartbeat.

She has a very long history of doing this sort of thing.

Eventually, I was able to update my mother on the septic repairs. When I first told her about discovering there was a leak at the expeller, she offered to pay for repairs. I ran the estimates by her and that we were going with the company that was closer.

Today, I told her how this company had stopped returning my calls, so I contacted the other company and ended up talking to the owner.

As I was trying to tell her this, she kept interrupting. I should just get my brother to do fix it, she tells me.

I had to explain, an excavator is needed. It has to be dug up.

We should just have it moved.

???

Moved? That would be an even bigger job to do!

She is not at all understanding our system here. My dad took care of all this stuff, and it’s as if she’s never seen the expeller before, even though she remembers the other things in the area, like the water fountain for the cows that was set up, along with a tap in the barn and another water fountain on the other side of the barn, all piped at the same time.

Then she started telling me my brother should be doing this, not me, because this is a man’s thing to do (talking to companies to arrange repairs, etc.), and my brother is somehow dumping this on me. I told her, this is my “job”. It’s part of the deal I had with her, and that I now have with my brother.

As all this was going on, she also started saying how, oh, someone told her that the farm is not hers anymore, it’s not her responsibility…

Yup.

She started backing out of her offer to pay for the repairs.

After she made a few passive aggressive threats about that, I finally told her, stop playing games with me. Are you going to pay for it, or not? Because if you’re not, I have to call the company to cancel the job.

Thankfully, there is now at least some water running through the expeller, so it would probably last us through the winter, but still… that would not be good.

Well, my mother, being my mother, bounced from saying, yes, she would pay for it (making it sound like I asked her to, rather than being something she offered to do) and why should she pay for it? At one point, she asked me, if I were in her place, would I do it? I said yes, if I could, I would.

I don’t think she expected that.

Anyhow.

This is another old thing with her. She will offer something, then when the time comes, start to back off, and use the offer to manipulate people. I have no patience for what is basically psychological abuse. Especially at a time like this, when we have so many things breaking down at once. I did manage to mention the hot water tank issues, but she just blew right past that. I doubt she even heard me. She even tried to drag my brother into the whole thing, and why doesn’t he call her?

I finally just said, it’s because you do stuff like this, and I just can’t handle this right now.

I then said we would talk later, said goodbye and hung up.

After that, I sent a message to my brother, updating him about the call, telling him it looks like my mother is backing away from her offer of paying for the repairs, so I’ll probably have to call and cancel the job.

While I was writing that message, my older daughter walked in and asked me if I knew what was going on with the bathroom fan.

Yup.

Guess what else is no longer working!

We had that fan’s motor replaced just a few years ago. The previous motor was the original, installed in the mid 70’s.

On top of all this, there were just lots of other little things going wrong, all day.

I did get one good phone call, though.

My brother called.

My mother had called him not long after talking to me.

She never mentioned her call with me at all, but she did bring up that she’d “heard” he was here at the farm yesterday. Yes. Yes, he was, he told her. He’d dropped some stuff off, then checked on the hot water tank and the bathroom for us.

He had to distract her from jumping to all sorts of conclusions about that.

She brought up wanting him to come to put away her air conditioner for the winter, which he’d already said he was planning to do. He won’t be able do it until after Nov. 1, though. When he goes there, he has to plan to be there for several hours, and it’s really hard for him to carve out that much time in his schedule.

As they were talking, the topic of the roof came up and he was saying how great it was that it was done, and that it has a 25 yr warranty, and they’ll both be gone before when.

What do you mean, she wanted to know. Is he sick?

…

No… 25 years is a long time. The average life span for a male is 80 years, and lots can happen in 25 years.

That led to them talking about the message our vandal somehow managed to leave on my brother’s cell phone, and the terrible things he was saying about my brother and I. My brother even managed to even address how our vandal does and says all these terrible things, and she treats him so well, but my brother and I love her so much, and take care of her, but she treats us to cruelly. He even brought up how we are dealing with so many problems right now, and her response is to mess with us. Why is that?

She started to go into her usual justifications, on how she loves everyone equally, but he cut that off, because no. She doesn’t.

He’s not sure if he managed to get through to her, how illogical her behaviour in that respect it. Particularly when it came to her saying she would pay for the repairs, then backing off. My mother, however, is acting as though I’d asked her to pay for it, which I would never do. “Donations gratefully accepted”, as my late brother used to say, but help from my mother tends to come with a high price tag, and if there were any way we could get the repairs done without her help, we’d do it.

In the end, though, my brother assured me that my mother will keep her word about paying for the repairs. The amount isn’t all that much – for her, at least – and she’s thrown twice as much at our vandal, just because, before. More than once.

Mostly, though, he wanted to make sure I didn’t cancel the repair job!

I told him I wouldn’t.

So that, at least was a positive end to the day.

Well. Not that the day is over yet, but close enough!

Tonight, I think I’ll make sure to take some ibuprofen instead of my usual acetaminophen, and maybe make sure I’ve eaten enough salt with my meals, before going to bed!

I think an early bed time is a very good idea, today.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

The Re-Farmer

What a long day!

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It’s not even 8:30pm as I start this, but it feels so much later – and not just because the days are shorter and it’s full dark outside!

Today was my mother’s appointment with the eye specialist in the city, but there were things I needed to do before getting to her place.

Which meant, of course, I got almost zero sleep last night. It seems the more I need to actually get sleep before scheduled activities, the harder it is for me to actually fall asleep!

Meanwhile, my daughters took care of all my usual outdoor routines today, which was a huge help.

The first thing I had to do that had me leaving quite a bit earlier than I would have needed to get to my mother’s, was to stop at the home care office. They needed a couple of signatures from me related to the hospital bed they provide for my husband. I also had a copy of the Power of Attorney paperwork for my brother that they needed in order to process my mother’s file for long term care. This was the last thing they needed as far as the paperwork goes. I spoke to the coordinator for a while. He had already talked to the next coordinator about long term care placement. Physically, my mother would only qualify for supportive living, which would be great for her, but behaviorally, they would not be able to provide her the support she needs. Her racism certainly would make it more difficult, too – the home care aids have already reported some unfortunate things my mother has said. Since they were there for only a few minutes, to help her take her medications, there isn’t a lot of time for her to really get bad with any of them. They do have instructions, though, on how to deflect and, if necessary, simply get out of the situation if it’s particularly bad.

As for the care facilities, her paperwork will first go to the supportive living coordinator, where it will be rejected. Then it will go to the long term care coordinator, who is already aware of my mother’s circumstances, and a decision will be made. If she does qualify for long term care, though, this will get her on a waiting list, unless something happens that puts her under urgent placement. Like if she fell and broke a hip, she would go straight from the hospital into long term care.

Or if she got herself evicted, though that’s a grey area.

We spoke about the meal assist, too. We’ll be trying it out at every two weeks, first. They have only 2 hours to do the meal preparation. We would have to make sure they have all the ingredients, any recipes needed, and containers for the meals to go into the fridge or freezer.

After finishing at the office, I was going to pick up fried chicken and potato wedges at our favorite place – the gas station! 😄 It was too early for their chicken to be ready, though, so I stopped at the grocery store to get drinks. There weren’t any that my mother would be willing to drink, so I went to the gas station and just parked until I was sure their first batches of chicken would be ready. I actually found appropriate drinks there, too!

I also made sure to pick up a couple of 5 Hour Energy bottles, and drank one of them right away.

My mother was very happy when I arrived with the food! She keeps saying, she shouldn’t eat fried chicken, because she has made associations with it and various physical complaints, but she really loves their fried chicken was wedges!

We had enough time that we could have a nice, relaxed lunch, and I could tell her about how things went at the home care office. We talked about her bubble packs, and how she needs to not take anything except when the home care aides come in. She told me how, this morning, the aide took the prescriptions out of the blister and set them in front of her in a pile, but when my mother spread them out and counted them, one was missing! The aide, on hearing that, said that she would need to make a report, but my mom knew it had been in the blister. After looking around, they did find it. It may have just stuck to her hand or the packaging as she got it out for my mother.

I told my mother that when I take my supplements, etc. I have a small bowl I put them into first, then take them all at once from the bowl. She liked that idea, so I went digging around her cupboards and found the smallest bowl she had – an absolutely delightful vintage glass dessert bowl with three handles and a pattern of grape clusters and leaves. I’m totally in love with it!

It’s still pretty big for the job, though, so when I told her I collect tiny bowls and how handy they are, she asked if I could bring her one.

I now have a mini tagine wrapped up and in my purse to bring to her. I think she’ll find it adorable!

We talked about the meal assist, and she’s not happy with it, and says that she can do meals on wheels. They deliver 5 days a week. It’s certainly an option, if this doesn’t work out, but we’ll try meal assist first.

We started to talk about the exterminator coming to her place tomorrow, and that I would be there early to try and move as many things away from the walls as can be done. She started to get very angry about it again. She’s convinced they have singled her out for abuse, and that they just want to go through her stuff and steal things. Frankly, I no longer have patience for her behaviour on this. She is very much at risk of getting evicted, and she doesn’t take it seriously. This has all dragged on far longer than it should have, because she would not let them do their jobs. So many people are bending over backwards to try and help her, and she just refuses to accept that she might be the one that’s causing the problem, not everyone else.

I was able to redirect that conversation more than a few times today!

When we left, we had what turned out to be a very easy and uneventful drive. The location of this clinic may be on the opposite end of the city from us, but it is very easy to get to from my mother’s town. The only unfortunate thing about the drive was that I was feeling myself start to fall asleep. I’m glad I got two of those 5 Hour Energy things. My mother even helped open the bottle for me while I was driving!

Once there, I got her checked in and then we sat in the waiting room. We were early, so I told her I was going to close my eyes for a bit.

I think I actually fell asleep for a bit!

Whether I did nor didn’t, by the time my mother’s name was called, I felt so much better.

The first stage of her appointment was for an assistant to ask various questions, check her current medications list, and try to get an idea of just how long my mother has been having issues. It was not easy. My mother’s sense of time has gotten pretty bad, but for all her complaints about her vision, she insisted the problem was her glasses, and didn’t even realize that her right eye was going blind!

He did a quick eye test with her, with the left eye covered, then again with the right eye covered. Her left eye can still see pretty darn good. With her right eye, she couldn’t even see a single large letter C. All she could tell was that there was a roundish shape. She also had some issues when he held up different numbers of fingers at different distances. Sometimes she got it right, sometimes not. At one point, she couldn’t even see him waving his hand back and forth in front of her right eye.

Next, he took her to a machine to take photos and video of the inside of her eye.

It was not easy.

The typical instruction is “focus on the green X in the middle.” To which my mother would say, “there is no X.”

After that went back and forth a bit, I told her to just look straight ahead. He went with that for the rest of the testing on that eye.

The assistant was so very sweet and awesome. He treated her so nicely, with such a gentle mannerism. I found myself wanting to give him a great big hug! 😄

It took quite a while to get the images he needed. It’s hard enough to stare straight ahead and not blink for several seconds at the best of times. It’s even harder for my mother, who had nothing she could focus on.

That done, it was back to an examination room, and for the doctor to see her.

It turns out her eye is really bad, and he was pretty alarmed about it. She’s had blood pooling in her eye for quite some time, but we just can’t get a handle on when she started to have problems. The only thing I could confirm is that I took my mother for her regular eye exam in February, and there was nothing of concern at the time. I was there and saw the photos of my mother’s eye. This damage was not there.

The doctor spent quite a bit of time explaining things to her and making sure she understood what was going on, as best she could, and to ensure she was able to give informed consent for the treatment.

She had to get drops to dilate her pupils, antibacterial drops, a needle to freeze the eye, and finally the needle for her first treatment.

All of which my mother put up with extremely well. When he was telling her what had to be done and made sure to get her verbal and written consent, her response was simply, “do what you have to do.”

Personally, I think I’d rather go blind than have injections directly into my eyeball!

She was pretty amazing about it.

Along with all that, he took the time to give me information booklets, a grid test for her left eye that she’s supposed to do daily, and a bottle of artificial tears. He really stressed with my mother, how important it is to NOT rub her eyes, touch them in any way, or even touch her face near that right eye. If her eye starts to itch, she is to take an eye drop.

If she starts to feel severe pain, though, she is to immediately return to the clinic to see him or, if it’s the weekend, to a nearby hospital that has a specialty in eye care.

When we finished and I was getting her next appointment in 4 weeks, and helping her pay for some of the tests not covered by our system, my mother just sat on her walker seat with her eyes closed, because she couldn’t really see. Once everything was taken care of and she was in the truck, I gave her my husband’s driving glasses – sunglasses designed to fit over regular glasses.

She really, really loved how much that helped!

Also, she looked adorable in camo print driving glasses. 😄

By this time, I was getting really hungry, and I figured my mother would be, too. When she started talking about getting me to heat up a can of soup for her supper when we got to her place, I was not about to leave it that way! I wanted to get gas in the city, where it’s a lot cheaper right now, and the gas station I stopped at had a Burger King attached to it. I ended up getting chicken fry meals for both of us, as that was something easy to eat while driving.

My mother said that the food could wait until we got to her place but I told her, when I get hungry, I start to become dizzy and ill, so I needed to eat. I set my food out on the console, and hers stayed in the bag.

As we were driving, I saw in my peripheral vision, as she reached out to take a fry!

“Temptation!” she said. 😄😄

I told her she could help herself! She had only a few, though.

Once we got to her place, though, I brought the food out for her to have right away. The home care worker would have come and gone while we were out, so I made sure she had her supper time pills with food.

She was quite happy with this.

She still wanted me to open up a can of soup for her, though, for later.

I took the time to explain some of what we brought home from the clinic, but only briefly. I’ll be back tomorrow and I will stay with her for the 6 hours she has to stay out of her apartment, if that’s what it takes! That will give us plenty of time to sit down with the information and I can explain things to her in ways she could understand.

When we first got to my mother’s place, though, I did a quick check on my messages and found my daughter had sent me photos.

It was very windy today.

We lost a tree.

When I got home, I just had to check it out and get some photos of my own, too.

That is one of the big trees!

In the second photo of the slide show above, I just had to get a picture of how perfectly it fell in between to other trees, without getting caught on them!

The crab apple tree in the third photo was not so fortunate.

The spruce landed right in the middle, breaking off about a third of it.

Well, this is one of the sick trees we were needing to remove, anyhow!

We should be able to use the trunk of that spruce, though. This is one of trees too big to use as a raised garden bed. We should be able to take the bottom, widest, 10 ft and set it aside for the outdoor kitchen we will be building. Part of the trunk is cracked, though, so I’m not sure we we’ll get a full 10 feet that isn’t damaged, or what we can salvage from the rest of it.

We shall see. It’s way too windy to even consider breaking it down and cleaning it up.

Once again, it will be up to my daughters to take care of the outside stuff, as I will be with my mother tomorrow.

I’m not sure what we can do for such a long time. There aren’t places to just hang out in her town, and I don’t think she’d be up to any outings. Plus, we want to go over the information the doctor gave her. We could stay in the common room of her building, but it might not be easy to have a private conversation in such a public space.

Well, we’ll figure it out!

Until then, I need to get myself to bed and, hopefully, get a solid night’s sleep this time!

On that note…

Have a good night, my friends!

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, kitty cuddles, and a lovely day

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It has been a bit longer than usual since I’ve actually done a morning harvest. With all the stuff going on for the past while, I lost track of time! I do try to harvest at least every other day. Since I’m in the habit of taking pictures what I harvest, unless it’s just one or two tomatoes or something like that, I checked the dates on my photos. Turns out, I haven’t done a harvest in 4 days!

Well, I got a pretty good one, this morning!

In the photo are a few San Marzano tomatoes at the top, some black cherry tomatoes, and a nice bunch of Forme de Couer tomatoes. I had to battle some very spiky stems to reach those G Star patty pan squash! With the beans, there are all three varieties in there, including a very decent amount of the Royal Burgundy bush beans – but this is the first time I picked any of the green Seychelle beans from the main garden area, and not just from the trellis over the Crespo squash. I had planted some Seychelles in the gaps where the purple Carminat beans failed to germinate, but I think only 3 Seychelle germinated. However many there were, there’s only one plant left, and it’s finally producing beans!

Among the Carminat beans, I found a couple that had gotten too big to harvest; they would no longer be tender, so I left them on the vine. There probably isn’t time enough, but who knows. They might fully mature and give me a few seeds I can plant next year! This is definitely a variety that grows well here, and we do enjoy them, so we do want to grow them again.

Of course, along with checking on the garden, I checked on the kitties. After setting the food out, I tried to do a head count.

I counted 34 cats and kittens.

*sigh*

I don’t even want to think of how many there would be, if we hadn’t lost so many kittens this year, and at least one adult. There are other adult cats that I haven’t seen in a while, but they may come back and stay for the winter. Some of them, anyhow.

Eye baby is pretty active among the kittens, but also has her favourite place to hang out, in the cat cage.

Which she can’t do right now, because I took that cat bed out to give it a wash!

So she made do on the blanket, instead.

Her cuddle buddy doesn’t seem to care, either way! This bigger kitten seems to be rather protective of eye baby.

Or just likes to use her for a pillow.

~~~~~ pause for interruptions and treating of eye baby~~~~~

I’m back!

We just gave eye baby her daily dose of antibiotics, and a feeding of cat soup from the modified bottle. I did something a bit different, this time.

I remembered we were gifted one of those mixers, where you can make individual size smoothies or whatever. I used that to make the cat soup. It worked. We had zero issues of bits paté clogging the nipple.

Why didn’t we think of this before? 😄

I still don’t know what to make of that eye. I think it’s getting better overall, but I also still think the eye itself is lost.

Oh, and we have determined something else. At least I did, only just now, when I let eye baby back out in the sun room.

She, is a he.

The girls had been able to determine that when they took care of the cats outside recently. A couple of the kittens, including eye baby, decided to roll onto their backs and give a good view. The other kitten was female, but eye baby is definitely a little boy.

But I am getting ahead of myself!

Aside from my usual morning routine, I had a day “off” today. A friend of mine from another province is in town right now, and we had a lunch date!

After getting one of the girls to distract the outside cats away from the truck with some treats, I headed to town a bit early. There was a store I wanted to check out, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. What I did get, however, was clear Gorilla tape. That will be very useful in setting the “greenhouse” around the eggplant and hot pepper bed. I’m hoping that the two clear shower curtains, or the two clear table protectors, with be long enough to go all the way around the box frame, and I had been wondering how I would join them together. This should be strong enough to hold.

I then went to the dollar store and ended up getting a several packages of angle braces that can be used to reinforce the donated cat shelter, instead of the triangle blocks of wood I was intending to use. These would be much better for the size of wood the shelter is made out of. I also got a few more things to use on the shelters, plus new sonic deer/wildlife screamers for the truck. I was down to one, and they’re not much good if there isn’t a pair of them.

I had just finished putting them on the truck and started heading to where we had arranged to meet, when my friend caught up with me. Perfect timing!

We had intended to go to a fish ‘n chips place for lunch, at 1pm, that had reopened recently. They’d had a fire some time ago, and it took quite a long time to get things up and running again, and I wanted to see the renovations. They were so incredibly busy, though, we barely got in the door, and saw that every table was full (granted, there isn’t room for a lot of tables anyhow) with lots of people waiting to place orders at the counter. So we left and walked up the block to a Thai place. I’d thought this place had closed and moved to the city, but I guess they’d opened a second location, instead. I haven’t been there in years, but my friend has been going there regularly since she’s been in town.

We have a very lovely, quiet, lunch, with excellent service!

It was really great to be able to sit and talk and get all caught up with each other.

After lunch, we just walked around and went to different places, checking out the marina and the local art club’s art gallery, and stopping at other restaurants for her to collect take out menus for her mother, who still lives out here. One place didn’t have any take out menus and the guy I asked said it was all their website, but her mother isn’t online, so that was of no use for her!

Town was really busy, as a lot of people use this long weekend to close up their cottages for the winter, and spend one last weekend on the beach before their kids go back to school. It wasn’t too bad, really, but neither of us enjoy crowds! All in all, though, we spent a couple of hours just hanging out together, and it was grand!

After we finally said our goodbyes – we may or may not have a chance to get together before she has to leave – I made a quick stop at the grocery store before going home. My husband has a birthday this month, so we’ll be doing things for him over the next week or so. We never celebrate birthdays on the actual day. 😄

I picked up some snacks he likes for now, and the girls tucked away the ice cream I got for later. My younger daughter plans to bake him a cake. His take out meal of choice was Chinese food, and I confirmed their hours while I was in town and got a fresh take out menu, just in case anything had changed.

They don’t have a website. 😄

We will be able to do the take out on Tuesday – after the long weekend is over!

It looks like I’m going to be doing a lot of running around over the next couple of weeks. We’ve got not only my husband’s birthday stuff going on, but the girls and I are taking my mother out to a nature reserve as part of her 93rd birthday celebrations – sort of. My mother said she didn’t want any fuss for her birthday this year, but she did want an outing to the nature reserve with my daughters, so we’re going to do both. Then there’s at least one appointment for my mother that I will be driving her to, and hopefully another in her home with the home care guy. My husband has to get to a lab for some bloodwork. I will hopefully see my friend one more time before she leaves. I also need to get back to the town my mother lives in to pick up kibble and lysine at the feed store, and will likely be back another day to pick up the clear plastic roofing material I’d ordered from the hardware store.

All of that in just the first two weeks of September, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something!

Meanwhile, I still don’t have the date for the spay/neuter the rescue has set up for us! I’ll have to contact her again. They’ve been insanely busy, too.

A couple of weeks from now, we should have someone coming in to excavate and repair the expeller on our septic system.

This is going to be a really crazy month!

After that, things should settle down, though.

I hope!

Pretty much all of this is good stuff, though, so no complaints!

The Re-Farmer

Well, that worked out

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Of course, we must have the cuteness, first!

I missed getting a picture of Judgement curled up around the kitten. He moved when I stop to get a picture.

Every once in a while, that kitten lets me pet it, and even pick it up.

Today was not one of those times.

It’s been really nice outside today. According to the weather apps, we hit 6C/43F instead of the predicted high of 4C/39F. We hit 6C yesterday, too. The forecast is for 4C tomorrow, then 7C/45F! All the paths we shovelled are melted and green, and there is water pooling in parts of the driveway, visible in the tire tracks.

A perfect day to walk around!

The guy that was interested in the old vehicles has come and gone. He came with his wife, his son, and two of his son’s friends. Really nice people! We started off looking at vehicles in the old hay yard, then made our way to the car graveyard, then back into the outer yard to where there are some vehicles by the storage shed, and even the ones by the old threshing machine. The son and his friends were really excited when we went past the old Farmhand tractor. Turns out one of them has one, that runs. They were so thrilled to see that it still had the original hand crank! 😄 In fact, they were geeking out all over the place. The wife, meanwhile, was just following along with her coffee, slightly bemused. Cars are definitely not her thing. 😁

In the end, they identified three vehicles they want to make offers on, and the son and his friends asked to include the tractor, too. That actually made me happy. I’ve already talked to my brother about having someone take it. I was thinking one of my nephews, perhaps. This is something that has historical value, and can still be restored. The longer it sits out there, though, the worse its condition will become.

They will talk it over, then he’ll call me with an offer to pass on to my brother.

I know my brother asked me not to let them in, but I hope he can trust me enough to understand why I did, anyhow. We’re already talking about selling this stuff for scrap, and we won’t get much money for them. Not the cars, anyhow. The old farm equipment would get more, since they don’t have things like vinyl dashboards and padded seats that need to be removed. If there is someone willing to buy individual vehicles for parts and restoration, I see that as a better option. We’d get a better price per vehicle that way, too, even it’s not by much.

We shall see how it turns out! I was very happy to meet them all and we had a great time walking around and chatting. They were excited like kids in a candy store at times! There were even a couple of vehicles they’d never heard of before, and would be all giddy about things like window shapes on an Epic, and the fins on the back of one old car from the 50’s.

The only downside I can think of, is that I don’t think my brother knows just how bad a shape most of these vehicles are. He thinks anything can be fixed, which may well be true, but who is going to fix them? Not us, and he sure doesn’t have the time to do it. He’s already got way too much to deal with! I even feel bad that he took so much time to come out here to climb up on the roof, then into that tunnel, and finally to replace the light fixture. He was here for 4 hours, plus another 2-3 hours driving time, plus time at the hardware sore, plus the amount of money he spent on the supplies. He really went above and beyond! He always does.

He is protective of his baby sister, too. Perhaps a bit over protective! 🧡😁

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, and changes of plans

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We got another first, this morning!

I harvested our very first green zucchini!

It’s also the only green zucchini. There are very few flowers at all, never mind the male and female flowers not blooming in sync. 🙁

I finally grabbed the nice, big sunburst squash, and have left some others to get bigger. I’ve been hand pollinating them, too.

There were a few ground cherries that ripened enough to fall off. Most of the green ones still on the plants are much bigger. It should be awesome when those ones are fully ripe!

While doing my rounds, I switched the memory card on the new trail cam, but it didn’t come with its own card, so I don’t have a spare to switch out the card in the old camera facing it. I’ve just gone through the files and realize that I will have to mount it differently to get a proper view of the area in front of the sign. It’s a bigger than the other camera, and the post itself is in the way. The solar power source also makes it top heavy, and the post is leaning over, so it wants to fall over.

I also noticed that, while I was sure I had set the 24 hr time correctly, it is 12 hours behind for some reason. The set up and menu controls are not as intuitive as with the other cameras we’ve used.

Later on, I’ll head over and do what I can to fix it. I’d do it now, but… well, plans for the day have changed.

I got a call from my mother last night, asking what I was going today. I told her I was planning to mow the lawn. Which is when she informed me that my sister was coming over to her place today, with more cucumbers for my mother, and that she was bringing some for me, too. She wanted to swing by our place with the cucumbers – and my mother!

I greatly appreciate that my mother called me about it last night, because my sister never did. Not even an email after she got home from her night shift, nor has she answered my own email about the visit.

Which means the girls and I have just spent the last while cleaning and prepping for company, while knowing full well that it will never be good enough. That’s assuming they even come into the house. I figure they’ll at least want to use the bathroom, at which point my mother will probably go searching through the drawers and cupboards again.

Once I was done my rounds, I continued the clean up the girls had been doing in the kitchen (because the kitchen is never, ever, done. *sigh*) and baked some corn bread. My mother has never had corn bread before, so she might refuse to eat it. Or I’ll get lectures about how I should have baked it with whole wheat flour or something. As with everything else, nothing will be good enough. I rather envy that the girls are still up at night and sleeping during the heat of the day.

My mom didn’t know when my sister had planned to come out here, and had suggested it would likely be after lunch, so I said that works – come in the afternoon. Hopefully, they’ll phone first, so I can unlock the gate ahead of time for them.

*sigh*

After so many years in the city and being really involved with so many things, I’ve discovered I really like being a hermit. I have no real desire to be around people. Add in less than stellar family relationships, and this is a whole lot more stressful than it should be.

I just want to mow the lawn, do yard work or putter in the garden, surrounded by yard cats. That’s it.

Ah, well. Maybe it will turn out to be a good visit!

Ha!

The Re-Farmer

Taking a sort of break

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I just need to take a brain break for a moment. Writing this is my brain break! :-D I have just spent the last hour or so at the local cemetery, with my mother and sister. It went well, overall, but things are always a bit stressful with my mother around.

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

I actually started my day with a telephone appointment with the doctor to talk about my mother. One of the things that he will get the ball rolling on is to have the home care department call my mom for an assessment, so see what sort of help she needs, if any. They can’t do that until my mother deals with her bed bug situation, which she is still treating as a big joke. She will be getting a phone call first, though, and hopefully they will talk to her about it. The doctor had questions about my mother getting infections or rashes from the bed bugs, but there is nothing he can do beyond that; it’s all on my mother to make the call to get her place treated.

At the same time, he had the results of my bloodwork and updated my prescription. It’s handy having the same doctor as my mother! So as soon as I got off the phone with him, I called the pharmacy. My husband called in his own refills to be delivered today, so I told them they would be getting a fax with my updated prescription, and asking them to include it with the delivery. I ran out of mine months ago, but without being able to go in to do my bloodwork, I was only getting 30 day refills. Each time it ran out, the pharmacy would have to contact the clinic and wait for another 30 day refill prescription to be faxed to them, so I didn’t bother calling in anymore. When I mentioned that to the doctor, he was a bit startled and assured me I’d be getting a 90 day prescription. In 2 months, I need to get more bloodwork done to see if anything needs to be changed. Meanwhile, my husband and I will be seeing the doctor in person in a couple of days.

My sister made the trip to my mother, to bring her out to the cemetery. She tries to manage it at least once a year. We met in town to have lunch at our hamlet’s single restaurant. I left a bit earlier, before the store with the post office closed. I’m happy to say, my PAL finally came in! I can now legally buy non-restricted guns and ammunition. Not that we have the money for it right now, but at least it’s an option.

So we had a nice lunch, and I let my mother know about the call she could expect from home care, but mentioned that they can’t come out until she gets the bed bug situation dealt with. She just smirked about that. I don’t know how to get through to her about her need to do this! Otherwise, her behaviour was pretty good, up until we were getting ready to leave, and she called the two staff over and started telling them to take away the “ugly” picture on the wall. There are paintings and photos from local artists for sale on the walls, and this one happened to be a portrait type painting of an old First Nations man, with slightly disheveled hair. She said a few tactless and somewhat racist things – things she gets away with, simply because of her age! My sister and I still called her out on it, so that didn’t last too long, at least. The staff handled it well, at least.

After lunch, I transferred some framed pictures my mother asked me to get out of storage – I’m glad I was able to find them at all! – into my sister’s car, then we headed to the cemetery.

It’s a very tiny cemetery connected with a church that has been closed for years now. It’s off the beaten path and tucked away among the trees. A very lovely spot. It was a bit of a surprise to see vehicles already there, including one I recognized.

It turns out our vandal had volunteered to cut the grass, and was doing it today.

He’d already used the weed trimmer around the half of the cemetery we needed to go into. When he realized I was there, he quickly packed up and left, in compliance with the restraining order. Meanwhile, my mother was there, calling out to him to come over. *sigh* I tried to explain to her that he couldn’t, and not to get him in trouble, but I don’t think she understood. Or maybe just didn’t care.

Since the grass had just been trimmed, it was all over the graves and stones, and he hadn’t had a chance to put things back. So I got a snow brush out of the van and started sweeping around the family graves.

There’s quite a few of them.

My sister, meanwhile, had brought a brush to scrub away the bird droppings, and water and rags to clean off the stones. They’d also brought a whole bunch of artificial flowers, so once everything was cleaned up and decorations returned, we set flowers out as my mother directed. She kept getting mad at us when we would ask her if she liked a particular colour grouping of flowers, but hadn’t finished setting them in place yet, because we hadn’t set them in place yet. !!

It took a while.

Then, after she said some prayers, she wanted my sister to get pictures of her by the freshly cleaned up and decorated family graves.

That was my cue to go. I suggested to my sister that she text our vandal before they left, to let him know I was gone and he could come back and finish what he was doing.

The whole thing went over pretty well, as far as such things go, but I’m mentally exhausted. It’s also the hottest part of the day, now, so I lost my productive time in the garden. I just talked to my daughters about it, and we’ve decided I need to have a “day off” from the garden. I’ve been pushing myself hard, and am in a lot of pain for it, so I really do need to back off a bit. My older daughter is going to do as much commission work as she can today, so she can take a day off work tomorrow. We’ll make a big push to get the last of the garden planted. Even if we don’t manage to get the A frame trellis supports in place, that can be finished after things have been planted. We just need to get the last stuff into the ground! I am just so incredibly tired right now, to the point it’s hard to think straight as I’m writing. Lack of sleep is part of the problem. It isn’t helping that Nosencrantz is determined to have access to the window ledge again, and keeps knocking out the window fan, leaving it dangling by its cord and bounding off the wall.

Usually at around 4:30am

It’s now doubly secured and, when I got home from my outing, I found it shifted out of place, but still on the ledge, so it’s working so far.

So, I think I’ll try and get some rest (and pain killer up!) today, and we’ll make the big push tomorrow.

Once the garden is in, we’ll celebrate with my younger daughter’s birthday pizza. It’ll be early, but her sister plans to get her some celebratory Taquitos and beer, cake and ice cream, closer to her actual birthday. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Awesome!

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

Happy Christmas to those who follow the orthodox calendar. :-) Happy Three Kings day. Today is our last day of of the Christmas season, and what a lovely day it turned out to be.

It was another cold one, but there was almost no wind chill, so it was quite bearable.

This morning, we had one deer at the feeding station, while this one just hung out at the gate for a while. I was able to get this picture through the kitchen window.

The deer and the cats are quite used to each other.

I even caught a flash of deer tail going past while I was setting out kibble and warm water for the cats. The deer didn’t run off until I came around with more feed.

Potato Beetle was quite content to enjoy the sunshine in his insulated corner, while the other cats ate. :-D

I found this interesting! One of the selling features of the Starlink system for more northern areas like ours, is that the dish keeps itself warm. You can see the icicles that show it’s working!

I hope the dish won’t need to adjust itself, because it’s quite attached to the roof at the moment. :-D

The roads were plowed yesterday evening, so before taking my mom’s little car out to help her with errands, I opened the gate and began to shovel away the plow ridge at the end of the driveway. While I was shovelling, a familiar looking front end loader came around the corner and headed my way. The driver stopped on the road and motioned to me, but my glasses were frosted over and I couldn’t see more than an arm waving around, so I came over as he opened the door – and offered to clear the driveway for me!

Of course, I said yes!!

This shot was taken after he was done and was backing out to the road again.

Now, I’m pretty sure that’s the renter’s front end loader. I don’t know of any others like it around. However, I did not recognize the driver. It could be they have a new hired hand? I don’t know. Whoever he was, I made sure to thank him enthusiastically, and I was soon off to my mother’s.

My mother had a few errands to run this morning, including a stop at the credit union. With all the restrictions still going on, and so many places that don’t recognize medical mask exemptions, even when I wear the Mingle Mask, I would just open the door for her and wait outside. Today, I used the wait to pop over to the mail box – I finally was able to print out the photo I needed, and have sent off my forms to get my PAL (Possession and Acquisition License), after passing my Firearms Safety course at the end of November. My mother was faster than I expected, and came out while I was about to top up her washer fluid. One of the staff came out with her, to help with the doors. As I helped her back into her car, she told me that the lady helping her saw me outside, and asked my mother to tell me that I was welcome to come in with her. I used to come in with her all the time, but as the restrictions got more draconian, and more warning signs popped up on doorways, I stopped. It’s good to know that they are reasonable.

Unlike our next stop at the pharmacy, which doesn’t recognise medical exemptions, so I can’t go to help my mother at all. You’d think, of all places, a pharmacy would get that some people just can’t wear masks; especially since the (illegal) mandates specifically mention exemptions, but some places really seem to enjoy our medical apartheid. At least they don’t harass my mother about covering her nose. She shouldn’t be wearing a mask at all, and can’t breathe if both her nose and mouth are covered.

The grocery store was our last stop and they are always good, there. My mother was able to stock up quite a bit, and will be set for a while. Between the beef I gave her, and the venison my sister gave her, she didn’t need to buy any meat at all. Which is good, because food prices are getting insane.

Aside from that, I was able to visit with my mother, and we had lunch before heading out for errands. Which is when I was able to show her pictures of her new great-grandson, who was born this morning! My SIL also sent birth pictures of his big brother from a couple years ago, and my goodness, they look so much alike! So far, their mother seems to be doing okay. She has some medical issues that they are keeping an eye on, but she should be home after 48 hours. Meanwhile, my brother and his wife are still there, helping out.

A new baby in the family was definitely the highlight of a very good day!

The Re-Farmer

Not my garden, and sighting

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This afternoon, I got to visit my sister and her husband on their farm.

We may be in the boonies, but they are even more in the boonies than we are! :-D

Before I left their place, we did a tour of their yard and garden, and I really appreciated being able to see how theirs is doing, in this heat.

Her row of rhubarb was a study in extremes. In the middle, she had these MASSIVE leaves and stalks – which is normal for her rhubarb – but in other areas, they were smaller and wimpy, like ours, and at one end of the row, they were basically dead. So strange!

Where I’m standing to take this photo used to be part of their garden, but they reduced its size. That area is now full of self-seeded dill. This end of the garden is where they have their annuals, with some rows already cleared and tilled. At the far end are their perennials, including onions (different from the ones they have in the rows visible at the annual end), horseradish, asparagus, sorrel, mint, and a few other things. They’ve got determinate tomatoes, and I could see some very large ones developing. No peas or corn, but they do have beans, beats and potatoes, among other things.

They usually water their garden from the nearby creek. In this photo, you can see a platform on the shore, and the end of the hose is between the two sticks in the water, with a float. This is where they pump the water from.

The creek is about 3 feet lower than usual this year, and it’s got to the point that they are watering using their well water. They only water every couple of days, though, unlike the nightly watering we are having to do. It has actually been lower than this, in the past.

After all those years… LOL

When my brother in law retired from farming (like where we are, most of the land is rented out), he took over much of the gardening. The first time a deer got into their garden, he put up the fence.

Deer are not the only issue they have. They also have to deal with black bears, raccoons and…

Yup. They have woodchucks, too. This den is under the deck of a now-empty house they share a yard with. There are dens in other areas, too. Apparently, their woodchucks have plenty of other food to eat besides their garden, because their deer fence is just touching the ground at the bottom, not buried, and they’re not trying to get it.

Which is as good a segue as any as to why I visited them today. My brother in law finally had time to help sight the scope on my crossbow.

Now, this is something we could have done ourselves, except we don’t have anything to accurately measure longer distances. My BIL is an avid hunter and has a range finder, so we figured we’d go to him and get it done right.

He never even used it. He just paced off the distance, just as he would have in sighting the scopes on his rifles! :-D

Now, he had plenty of experience with rifle scopes, but he’d never worked with a crossbow before, so the first thing he did was spend time reading the instruction manual (I brought everything! LOL). We had only finger tightened the scope, so after he checked it a few times and confirmed that it was the right distance for me, he tightened that down, and then we went to his target bale.

The instructions said to start at 10 yards, which is about where the corner of that fence is, then moving to 20 yards to fine tune the scope. He is sitting at 20 yards in the photo, which is what we need the scope to be sighted to.

Also, do you see that white blob on the creek in the background?

That is a flock of pelicans. :-D

He was expecting it to take only about half an hour to sight the scope, but we ended up out there, in the heat, for probably more than an hour before we stopped.

He did the final shots at about 30 yards, before we called it for the day.

The bolt here is the first shot done at 30 years. He was aiming for the target on the left.

If you look at the top right, there is a single hole. That was the first shot at 10 years, before he started adjusting the scope.

Above and to the right of the centre target are a series of holes. He hit the exact same spot a couple of times. The instruction manual described how many clicks equaled 1 inch at 20 yards and, according to that, with the number of adjustments he made, it should have been hitting to the left of the centre target! After hitting the same spot a couple of times, the bolt ended up so far into the target, the fletchings were squeezed into the hole, too. One of them ended up coming loose. It just needs a bit of fletching glue to fix and it’ll be fine, but that’s when he started to aim at the other target.

By the time he was done, he could get a good grouping at 30 yards, but it was still hitting to the right of the target. He’d adjusted it so far, he wasn’t sure it could go any further. The scope we have is different from any of his. In fact, it had a whole extra knob to adjust, but not even the scope’s instruction sheet (which was for rifles, not crossbows) had it labelled on their diagram.

So the crossbow is not sighted, but it is closer, and we are in a position that we can figure the rest out ourselves. Of course my husband, with his military background and marksman qualifications, knows how to do it. The main issue was measuring distance. Which my BIL just paced off, anyhow.

I think we can manage more accuracy than that, with what we have! :-D

Adjusting the scope was not the only thing that was a problem. The other was cocking it in the first place. The kit came with a rope cocker. There is a rock cocking groove at the end of the stock, just before it can be adjusted to size. The middle of the rope goes in the groove, two hooks with pulleys hook onto the string, from under the stock, and there are a pair of handles to pull on. At just shy of 6′ tall, he actually had trouble cocking it, once he straightened up past a certain point. He already had doubts that I could cock a bow with 220lb draw weight, but in the end, I’m basically too short. If he, at about 8 inches taller than me, was having a hard time, it’s pretty much assured that I don’t have the height and arm length to be able to raise the string high enough to latch in place!

He recommended we pick up a crank cocker.

Since we were never able to complete sighting the scope, I never fired the crossbow myself. That will just have to wait a bit longer.

In shooting the crossbow, he had a couple of issues with it. Obviously, the scope itself was one. I know that a lot of people who buy kits will replace the kit scope with a higher quality one right away. This wasn’t a matter of quality of materials, but adjustment. He also didn’t like the trigger, which was something else I saw some reviewers complaining about. It does, however, shoot well and shoot true. Once the scope is properly sighted, we should have no issues with it. I’ve seen reviewers complain about the adjustable stock, but he had no issues with that.

He also really didn’t like the rope cocker. He had mentioned to me that he had a friend who bought a crossbow and, the first time he tried to cock it, it slipped and he almost groined himself severely. He then immediately got rid of it. As my BIL was repeatedly cocking the bow, he said he could see just how easily that could happen. Eventually, I learned that when this person had tried to cock his bow, the stirrup slipped off his foot.

…

The instructions are EXTREMELY clear about how important foot placement in the cocking stirrup is. Which rather makes me wonder just how closely instructions were being followed. Mind you, this happened quite some time ago. The instructions may well include that now because people were hurting themselves by having just their toes in the stirrup, instead of having it under the middle of their foot.

There’s a reason the instruction manual has more safety warnings than pretty much anything else! This is not a toy.

So now we need to figure out where to set up a target practice area, mark out distances, and figure the rest out ourselves.

I did have some unexpected disappointments about the whole thing. While they are not being mean or malicious about it, it’s clear neither my BIL nor my sister are confident in me. Not just in being able to use and shoot the bow (yes, I have the physical strength pull 220lbs draw weight with the rope cocker), but they seemed to assume that this was some sort of spur of the moment thing I decided to do, without any sort of research or analysis, first. Like I was thinking of it as… well… some kinds of toy. The fact that I hope to actually use it to hunt is another area they clearly didn’t have confidence in me about, with both or them, at one point or another, making sure to mention that a deer will run off after being shot, and then it needs to be tracked. I knew that, of course. It happens even when hunting with a rifle. Why did they assume I would not know that? There were a few other… assumptions… made that had me wondering. I think part of it, for my BIL, was simply because he assumed that since he was having such a hard time with some things, I would have an even harder time, and not things where my height would make a difference. Was it because I am female, and they assume I’m weak? Or because I’m fat? Or because I’m the baby sister? I don’t know. It was off putting, even though I could tell they did not have any ill will behind their comments. More like their filter was off. :-D

Well, we shall see how things work out over time. First things first. We need to get that scope sighted properly, and then I have to practice. My husband will be able to cock the bow, no problem, and honestly, I think I might still be able to as well. Even if I can, we will be getting a silent crank. The rope cocker, it turns out, squeaks! :-D

My daughters, meanwhile, are pining for a compound bow.

I foresee a future Christmas gift…

The Re-Farmer