funny

What’s that in there? and half a step closer

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So… this is what we have to entertain us when we’re using the bathroom.

The nice thing is that, while we are at -22C/-8F outside, the thermometer in the sun room was reading 0C/32F at the time I took this photo.

In other things, we got an email from the financing company about the Caravan. For proof of income, I’d sent a copy of the annual letter my husband gets from Sun Life, confirming our payments for the year, but for CPP Disability, all I had to sent them was a pdf of our automatic payments into our joint bank account. As of yesterday, the lady with the financing company thought everything looked fine.

Well, almost.

The pdf I sent was for only 60 days. The lender requested one for 3 months.

So I sent them in a 90 day statement. I even thought of doing that from the start, but they were asking for pay stubs as proof of income, so I was just hoping a bank statement would be good enough. Ah, well.

Considering the time right now, I figure if we’re going to hear anything either way, it’ll be tomorrow at the earliest.

Once again, I’m really REALLY hoping this pans out. I had to make a quick run into town today and, once again, the van did NOT want to start. For all its problems, though, I’m more comfortable driving the van in this cold, then my mother’s car.

We’re looking at going into the city for our first big stock up shopping trip for March, on Friday – the day after tomorrow. Which would be a van trip, due to the sheer volume and weight of such a trip being too much for my mother’s little car. It would be so awesome to be able to make the trip in the replacement vehicle, and not worry about whether or not our van will start!

The Re-Farmer

That’s life with cats, I guess!

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As I was heading out to do my morning rounds, I was greeted by this adorableness.

I took this photo through the screen window of the old kitchen door, so it looks out of focus. This is the tortie the girls have named Phantom, because she has half her face covered with a black “mask”. Alas, I was unable to sneak a pet before she woke up, saw me setting out the kibble, and ran outside.

As I write this, we are at a wonderful -5C/23F, and are expected to go above freezing. Too warm for my down filled parka, so I was going to wear my hoodie.

Or not.

I’d left it hanging on the back of a spare dining room chair.

A chair the cats use as a bed.

I even made sure the hood wasn’t on the seat, so they couldn’t lie on it. This is just from them leaning against it!

Life with cats. Cat hair, everywhere!

I did have another light jacket I could use. I just don’t like it as much. I still had to take the lint brush to it, since I’ll be wearing it when I head to the city today. Hopefully, I won’t be trigging too many cat allergies when I’m around people, because there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

As lovely as the temperature is, though, walking out the sun room door was like hitting a wall. We’ve got 30 kmh/19mph winds right now, coming in from the south. It did make doing the rounds much less pleasant than it would have been, but the wind chill was still only -13C/9F, so it’s still not much to complain about! The only down side it that I’m going to be driving head on into it, the whole way to the city with the van, which is going to do a number on my mileage. At least it should make the trip home better!

I’m just loving what I’m seeing in the forecast over the next few days. We’re actually supposed to go above freezing for several days!

We’ll see what we actually get, of course.

The Re-Farmer

Got my goat!

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I like little things.

The dash of our vehicles is decorated with faux jewels and tiny plastic animals, set up in amusing poses. At least it did until we prepped it for trade in (it’s going to be scrapped if that happens, so we left the faux jewels. 😁) Across the top of my monitor, I’ve got a row of tiny Kinder Egg dinosaurs and a couple of tiny chickens. As we cleared the house of my parents’ stuff, we found other tiny objects that we kept, ranging from toys they had for the grandkids, to miniature decorative plates and so on and I also kept.

Under my monitor, I had a number of tiny objects, such as a miniature treadle sewing machine, unique little rocks and pebbles, and tiny toy animals.

Note I said “had”.

Nosencrantz discovered them.

I keep finding them on the floor, so I started to hide them under my keyboard.

I am now regularly awakened by the sound of her scratching under my keyboard, trying to get at them!

This morning, she got my goat.

She even chewed off a leg!

We just got them a bunch of new toys, but nooooo…. she had to go and get my goat!

Why is she so determined to get these tiny animals???

The Re-Farmer

It’s funny, but…

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As I write this, we are currently at -21C/-6F, with a wind chill of -32C/-26F. Which means it’s that time when I start seeing this going around online.

This is, of course, wrong in places. There is no “last cookout of the season.” Winter is the best time to have a cookout, regardless of temperature! Especially at midnight on New Year’s. 😄

Yeah, it’s funny, but…

I also saw a post from someone who doesn’t live very far from us. Their furnace is fueled by natural gas. It stopped working last night.

The natural gas chilled to a gel, and stopped flowing.

I didn’t know natural gas could do that.

Someone else tried to drag out a hose to fill their animal’s water troughs, but the hose froze before they got there.

Thank God we’re going to be warming up and staying mild for at least the next week to ten days!

The Re-Farmer

Recommended: Lost in the Pond

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Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!

Today, let’s go for something fun; Lost in the Pond; America’s Finest British Import. Lawrence Brown moved to the US from Britain, and has turned his culture shock into some fantastic and hilarious YouTube videos, in his “…quest to uncover all of the memos that Britain and America Lost in the Pond!” He also has a presence on the usual social media, a website and a Patreon page.

Some of his earlier videos were so popular, they have gone on to become series.

Such as his videos on American Things Britain Doesn’t Even Have a Word For.

He’s also been working his way across the US with videos on how to pronounce different US place names.

Ha! Someone should do videos like with with Canadian place names, too. 😀

My favourites, though, highlight the differences in ordinary things.

Like kitchens…

… refrigerators…

… bedrooms…

Okay, I didn’t know the US had so many HUGE bed sizes.

Then there’s ordinary household objects.

To me, the faucet is the part the water runs from. The tap is the knob or lever you turn to make the water flow.

There’s also the differences in hotels.

He would get a laugh out of some of the elevators I’ve been in, that have things like M for Mezzanine, G1 or G2 for different ground floors, and buttons for the front or the back doors of the elevator. I once lived in an apartment building where my 3rd floor apartment was on the ground floor at the street level main lobby, while the 1st floor, ground level was two floors down, but opened out to a courtyard near a lagoon. It also had two underground parking levels, the side lane entrance to which was under my 3rd floor, street level apartment.

I really enjoyed this one.

After our second daughter was born, I got a cookbook that covered how to make meals that could be adapted for adults/older kids, toddlers and baby food, all from the same recipe. It turned out to be a British cookbook. It took me forever to figure out what courgettes and aubergine were!

Also, what they’re calling as either a gyro or a … donna kabab? Is that what he’s saying?

We know them as Donairs. That’s a Canadian thing.

Oh, how I miss a real Donair.

Gotta love the winter related ones.

Being Canadian, some of the laughs I get is because we are such a mix of both the US and Britain in our everyday lives! 😀

At the time I’m writing this, there are 6 years of videos to enjoy, and I do hope you have a chance to go through many of them. They’re a hoot! Well worth recommending.

The Re-Farmer

Strange hair!

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Happy Mother’s Day!

Last night we had some rain storms blow through. High winds were the main issue. Having rain now, when the flood waters have yet to finish receding, probably didn’t help much, but I don’t think we got enough for it to be an issue. Mostly, it was the winds that were of concern.

Since things have warmed up, there are far fewer outside cats to greet me in the morning.

I only saw 5 or 6, in total. The amount of kibble needed has also dropped considerably. For a while, I was putting food out twice a day, and sometimes even a third little top up got done if I was up in the wee hours and saw they were out again. Now, I’m finding kibble still left in the trays at the end of the day!

That’ll make things a bit easier on the budget!

While switching out the trail cam memory cards and checking the state of the garden beds, I noticed something rather unusual.

The straw bale had grown hair!

Green hair.

Looks like last night’s rain was enough to get the seeds caught in the straw to sprout, enthusiastically! It’s even growing out the sides exposed by the straw that had fallen away from the bale over the winter.

Too funny!

I’m going to just leave it. Once the soil had dried enough, we’ll be bringing the wood chipper over and running straw through the shredder chute for mulch. Last year we tried that by running the lawn mower over the straw, and it worked much better than non-shredded straw, but doing it that way clogged up the air filter on the mower like you wouldn’t believe! We are very happy to have the new wood chipper available.

Anyhow.

Having sprouted greens included with the dry straw for mulch is just more nutrients for the soil. 🙂

It should be interesting to see how tall it gets by the time we’re ready to do the shredding.

The Re-Farmer

We forgot!

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When preparing for this year’s Easter basket, we did three different types of pickled eggs.

While going through the fridge, I noticed a container that got pushed to the back and…

… discovered we completely forgot about the soya sauce pickled eggs!

So I had one with my breakfast.

We were missing the Mirin sauce, but it was still quite good. Definitely something worth making again. It’s too bad we forgot about them for our basket. They would have looked a lot like milk chocolate eggs in there! 😀

The Re-Farmer