getting things done

Almost there!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today was my day to get the truck to the garage, but not until 10am, so I had plenty of time to do my morning rounds.

Where I found these…

I just had to include my hand for perspective, though the kitty prints help, too. That is one big raccoon was had visiting us!

It’s doing a good job of cleaning up the old kibble that cats won’t eat anymore, so I can’t complain. I haven’t checked today’s trail cam files yet, so I don’t know it it was caught, but a few days ago I saw him going in and out through our gate, and he is a big’un!

While putting kibble into the isolation shelter, I got tackled.

That little tabby has been after attention pretty much every morning, now.

Colin wanted attention so much, he forced himself into my hand while I was trying to get pictures! Lately, I’ve typically had about 5 or 6 friendly males, pushing for attention, in the mornings. Plus Magda. I have to be careful trying to pet her. She’s so small, the big boys push her around without even noticing!

As usual, I left for my appointment early, remembering to leave the gate open for today’s prescription delivery. My husband would get his meds faster that way, than if I went to the pharmacy to get them myself.

While dropping off the keys, I asked for a general idea of how long it would take. The best he could tell me was “a few hours”. Thankfully, it’s warmer now (we are still at our high of -6C/21F), so it was a fine day to walk around town.

The first thing to do was find somewhere to get breakfast. I was still early enough that not a lot of places were open yet, but also, I needed to find somewhere were I could adjust my order to fit my Lenten fast from sugars and starches. I ended up walking across town, almost to the lake, to a hotel cafe where I knew they would be open for breakfast. I don’t often go there, partly because they are not accessible, and I don’t do well with stairs. But, it’s got reliably good home cooking type meals, and they open early in the day. I also knew that I would be able to take my time while there, and not feel like I’m taking up a table they needed for any sort of rush.

All their breakfast meals include home cut hash browns and toast in your bread of choice – both things I wanted to skip. I told the waitress what I was needing to cut out, and asked if they could just add an extra egg or something, instead. She said she would talk to the kitchen staff, and that’s what they ended up doing. I got their “Farmer’s Breakfast) of eggs, bacon, ham and sausage. The hash browns and toast would have made it a really huge meal! It was very good.

My tea without sugar, however, was … tea without sugar. 😄

When I was done there, I went to several nearby shops to look around. One of them was a dollar type store, and I did find a few things, including a long pipe cleaner style brush for our bathroom sink. When we had to take stuff out of the bathroom while replacing the taps, faucet, some pipes, and the old tub surround, we had to take pretty much everything out of the bathroom. That included one of these pipe cleaner type brushes. It’s the only thing that can clean out the bathroom sink properly.

Unfortunately, it disappeared at some point. We figure a cat had to have dragged it off, but to where? It’s been months, and we still haven’t found it!

I was happy to see they had some in stock and made sure to grab one!

I spent enough time looking at things and checking out other stores that when I got closer to another restaurant, a fried chicken place, it was actually a good time to stop for lunch.

They had a new sign out front. They are now open for breakfast, too! Until recently, they didn’t open until 11am. Something to remember, should I need to in the future.

It took a while, but I finally settled on one of their “snack” meals, that came with only one side and no bun. Instead of the usual fries, I chose their coleslaw. I like their coleslaw better than their fries, anyhow! So that worked out.

Again, I was able to take my time about it, as much to make it easier on my hips and knees as anything else! I knew I would have a lot more walking ahead of me.

Once I was done there, I made my way to another shop where I found a few more small things to pick up. The pharmacy was across the street, and I remembered to go there to get the printouts for our taxes.

We paid over $1400 in co-pay for my husband’s meds last year. His private insurance covers 90% and, once the $3000+ deductible is covered, some of his medications switch to the provincial prescription insurance, which then covers 100%. Most of his meds aren’t covered by the provincial insurance at all.

Thank God for private insurance!

My prescription co-pay amount is miniscule compared to his.

From there, it was more walking – and finding a clean bench to sit on for a while. Last of all, I stopped at a hardware store, where I finally found a metal dish rack to replace the plastic coated one we’ve been using since moving here. It was here before us, and pieces of the plastic coating was already starting to break off. After 7 more years, it was definitely time to replace it! It was surprisingly hard to find a non-plastic dish rack in the size we needed.

I mightily resisted picking up grow light kits today. One would have done will for our plants in the living room. The other would be great for starting seeds. I have decided I do want to use the new part basement for seed starting, but we have to do some re-arranging, first. I do have a nice, bright shop light down there now, but it’s not the kind where a timer could be set. I can still use one of the big aquarium lights, though, and it does have a timer, so that could work. We shall see.

At that point, I was just a couple of blocks from the garage. I hadn’t heard from them yet, but I was done with walking, so I headed over. I knew I could stay in their office waiting area, at least for a while.

When I got there, the truck was up on the lift.

There were 3 mechanics under it, the owner/mechanic had something in his hand, and they were all looking slightly perplexed.

Hmmm.

Once I was in the office, one of the first things I noticed was a bag of take out food on the desk, still all closed up.

The owner soon came in and told me they would have to change the oil plate gasket another day. He had the wrong one! He ordered a new one immediately.

He went out and was back again. The only thing left to do was the wheel alignment, and he suggested doing it at the same time as the gasket, rather than today. The bay with the equipment to do the wheel alignment had another vehicle on it still. They’d have to finish that vehicle first, then move the truck, which would make it another 2 1/2 hours! They were so busy, they had all three bays full, plus smaller vehicles/equipment tucked in spaces in between that, even with three mechanics, they hadn’t been able to stop for lunch, yet! It was well past 1pm by the time I got there.

By stopping at this point, though, it would only be a few more minutes.

So I paid for the work they did today. When he mentioned that the gasket he’d ordered would be in tomorrow, I asked if I could come back tomorrow, and he fit me in for the afternoon.

Just one more day, and the list of small(ish) fixes will be done!

It was just a bit longer as they lowered the truck and tested it out before it was ready.

Today’s work was replacing a front left axle seal, the new oil pressure sensor, a new cv boot and new front links. The parts totaled $216.35. Shop supplies cost $36.99. Three hours of labour cost $299.97 After taxes, the final bill was $619.71

I’m expecting tomorrow’s work to be in the $200-$250 range, after taxes.

That done, I still had a couple more stops to make, now that I could use the truck to do them. First, a quick trip to the grocery store across the street to refill two of our big water jugs. We didn’t need anything else, but I looked around anyhow, and did get a few things that were on sale – specifically, cheese and lactose free cheese, plus some salad kits that I can eat. The ones I got at Costco have dressings that are just over my tolerance level for spicy heat.

Before leaving town, I got some gas at the one gas station where the prices have started to go down. $1.519/L instead of $1.569/L

My husband had let me know a parcel had come in, so I stopped at the post office on the way home. The 250 watt ceramic bulbs I ordered were in. However, the pair of clamp lamps I ordered that can handle 250 watt bulbs are not in yet. Once that package reached the Canadian side of the border, it switched to CanPar for delivery. I think we might actually get delivery to our physical address with them! Tracking information says March 14 for delivery, but I do know it’s in our province now, so it shouldn’t take that long.

Once it’s in, I want to replace the fixture in the isolation shelter. The new fixture has a wire guard around the bulb, so no cats can burn themselves. The current fixture has no such protection. Granted, it would take a lot for a cat to end up that close to the heat bult, but still, I’d rather not take the chance! Plus, the current heat bulb is incandescent, so there is light in there, day and night, which can disrupt sleep patterns. Considering they cluster together right in front of the bulb to stay warm, that can potentially be an issue.

The clamp lamp in the sun room has a 150 watt ceramic bulb in it right now, and I’m thinking of still using that, but setting up a second 250 watt heat bulb nearby, somewhere.

I’ll figure that out, once the lamps come in.

Meanwhile…

Look! No check engine light! And the oil pressure gauge is working again!

The tire light is for the three remaining tire sensors with dead 14 yr old batteries that need to be replaced. Those can be done, little by little. We’ve had that light on for over a year, now. I think we can last a few more months! We need to focus on paying off the credit card for the work we’re getting done right now, first.

The trip meter shows how many kilometers I’ve driven since filling the tank at Costco. Which is about twice what it normally would be, this early in the month!

Oh, I just realized. I need to go read the meter for our electricity, while it’s still light out enough to see it!

My last task on today’s “to do list”.

It’s been a pretty darn productive day.

I’m going to feel much, much better once the final work is done, tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Getting things done

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The main thing on my schedule for today was to go to my mother’s and help with her grocery shopping, but of course, there was plenty of things that had to be worked around the time I would be gone.

Part of my morning routine is to top of the dry kibble for the inside cats, luring (or chasing) them out of my office/bedroom and closing the door, leaving only Butterscotch and our elderly Freya in the room. Freya doesn’t bother Butterscotch, ever, so that works out. Once the other cats are out, I keep them out long enough that she can use the litter box without getting harassed by some of the younger cats, eat and drink, and just de-stress for a while.

She seems to be getting use to the routine, and has started to go around more and more of the room, like she used to when she first was brought in from outside. Which means that every now and then, I’d come back into the room and I can’t find her in any of her usual spots.

Today, I found her up by the ceiling!

She hasn’t gone up there in ages! It used to be one of her favourite spots to take naps, but it’s a favourite spot for a lot of the cats. I didn’t dare move too close and startle her away, but I did manage to zoom in for a photo.

Clearly, she was not trusting me, even though I didn’t come any closer!

Once the inside cats were done, it was time to do the outside cats. While we still have lots of donated wet cat food, since it’s too cold to give any to the outside cats, we were getting low on dry kibble in the bin. I reached a level where it was a mix of regular store kibble and a particular brand of feed store kibble. It’s been a while since they had that kibble, so I thought they might be willing to eat it again, after changing things up, but nope. I can see by the trays that they are actually picking out the other brand of kibble, and leaving the feed store kibble behind!

Getting more kibble from the feed store got added to my to-do list – just not that brand!

Once the outside stuff was done, I had time to look up some things and found we had at least on package ready to pick up at the post office, so I would leave a bit earlier to do that first.

I also decided on a style of camp commode honeypot to use in place of the bucket we’re using as a honeypot right now. I ended up choosing this one (not an affiliate link). It was the tallest of the ones I was looking at, has the elongated opening, can handle a lot of weight and still be stable (at least, that’s one of the selling features), has a padded seat, and can be folded up to take less storage space.

Plus, it was on sale. Bonus!

It has already been shipped, and should get here in about a week. Our septic pump should be working again well before then – I hope!!! – so this will be for the next time we have septic or plumbing problems!

With the way things have gone since we’ve moved here, I’m resigned to having some sort of septic or plumbing problems pretty much every year.

Another thing on my to-do list was to call the home care case coordinator. After talking to my mother on the phone on Monday, and finding out that no one showed up for two of her med assists on Saturday, I had left a message with the case coordinator. Today is Friday, and I hadn’t heard back yet, so it was time to call.

The case coordinator was in her office, so I got to talk to her right away, rather than leave another message. When I told her why I was calling, she was right on top of it, and had been looking into it.

According to my mother, when the person who was supposed to show up on those two med assist visits on Saturday showed up for the Sunday med assists, she told my mother she didn’t go to her place because she thought my mother was still in the hospital.

The case coordinator had confirmed she had visited my mother on the Thursday previously, so clearly, she knew my mother was home. There was nothing on the files to say that she did not visit my mother on the Saturday, either.

If my mother had been in the hospital still, she would never have been on their list to visit at all, but she was. There is no reason for the home care aid to have not shown up at my mother’s on that day.

The incident has gone up to someone higher up on the authority chain, and we should be hearing from her soon.

Since I had her on the phone, we covered a few other things. I let her know about the monthly bloodwork requisition forms I got yesterday, and that these would be stored in the lock box, so the care aids will know there will be something extra in there that they don’t have to deal with, other than leave them there.

I also asked if there was any progress in getting my mother into supportive housing or long term care. When it comes to the paperwork part of things, the case coordinator I’d started this with, who now works in the town the hospital my mother was in, had done as much as could be done at their end. Her file is just working its way through the system. It’s just really hard to get someone into long term care from the community, rather than from a hospital.

She did, however, talk to me more about the things to look out for that could help the process out. Basically, anything that makes it unsafe for my mother to be at home, both physical and cognitive. Physically, my mother is very concerned about falling, because that wrecked knee of hers now sometimes gives out. Frustratingly, the fact that she hasn’t fallen, and has managed to catch herself, means that they consider her okay to be on her own. With cognitive issues, my mother isn’t one to wander off and not know where she was going. Even if she did tend to wander, she physically can’t go very far, so that’s almost a moot point. There is her memory failures, though. Something my mother is noticing herself and quite alarmed by. So far, though, they have not been the sort of memory failures that would endanger her. She couldn’t remember until I questioned her, what day the home care aid didn’t show up, for example. She wrote it down, which is good, but then she couldn’t remember where the paper she wrote it down on was. None of this is endangering. Forgetting the stove on would be an example of endangerment – but my mother is aware enough of her own increased forgetfulness that she is super careful about that and constantly checks to make sure the stove is off (she does not use the oven at all).

Still, she gave us more things to keep an eye on that could help get my mother into the long term care she wants to be in.

The call done, it wasn’t much longer before I had to start heading out. By the time I got to the post office, a second parcel had been processed, which was nice. If it hadn’t been, it would have had to wait until Monday.

From there, it was to my mother’s town, early enough to go to the feed store and get a 40 pound bag of kibble, in the brand that cats will eat. While there, I asked about my order for 4 pounds of lysine (they come in 2 pound containers). I’d ordered some a while ago – before we had run out – but it still wasn’t in, the last time I was there. I had asked for it to be ordered again. This would have been at least a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been there often enough that the guy is starting to remember me, but he couldn’t remember anything about lysine. He looked my file up but couldn’t find any order made. He was going to order it for me again when I happened to see something tucked into the shelf on the other side of the reception area that looked about right.

Sure enough, there were two 2 pound containers of lysine there! They don’t carry it normally, he knew nothing about it, and never noticed tucked into the shelf until I spotted it.

I bought the lysine, and he cancelled the order he had started, since this will last us a few months. I’m glad I spotted it. We’ve been out for a while, and I’m starting to see more coughing among both the inside and outside cats.

That done, it was off to the gas station to top up a bit, and pick up my own lunch of fried chicken and wedges, as my mother was getting her Meals on Wheels today. From there, I could finally go to my mother’s – and was even earlier than I told he to expect me!

Which gave us a chance to chat and visit while we waited for her meal to arrive. I was able to go over the bloodwork requisition forms with her, and she was happy with the idea of putting them in the lock box for safekeeping. I also updated her on my conversation with the case coordinator.

When it came to keeping an eye on things with her, I made a point of saying (again, though I doubt she remembers) that if someone like a doctor or nurse asks how she is feeling, this is the time to tell them the worst of how she if feeling! Not to brush things off by saying, “I’m doing all right”. My entire family is horrible for this. We could be sitting there with blood gushing out of a wound, and if someone asked how we’re feeling, we’ll say we’re doing just fine! It has taken me so many years of effort to get out of that habit, and I still fight it at times, so I totally understand what my mother is doing, and why. My mother’s response was, nobody wants to hear the bad stuff. I told her, when it comes to the doctors, they NEED to hear the bad stuff!

I honestly don’t think she got it, but at least I tried!

Meanwhile…

As I was getting some things from the cupboard for her, I took a look to see how stocked her fridge was, and noticed a container of what looked like soup, that looked out of place. I had immediate suspicions.

As we were sitting and chatting some more, my mother suddenly started telling me that our vandal has not been doing well, that he’d had to go to the hospital for a second time after his surgery, and that he was scheduled for more chemo today. She knew so much, I asked if my sister had been telling her this, since my sister is sometimes still in contact with our vandal (we all used to be very close to him). My mother immediately started to look sheepish.

No, they (he and his wife) visited.

Yesterday.

*sigh*

There is just no use in telling my mother she needs to cut ties with him. You’d think all those years of horribly abusive messages he left on her machine would be enough, or all the things he “borrowed” from this property when it was empty, and never returned, to the point she asked us to move here, but nope. Apparently not.

They had left her the mystery container of soup I saw in her fridge. My suspicions were correct.

I didn’t bother saying anything, though. There was no point.

Then her meal arrived, and we had our lunches together. I had suggested we go through her shopping list before hand, but it turns out she hadn’t made one! That is a first. She had gotten into sorting through her papers yesterday – she has a terrible habit of keeping way too many things that should be thrown out – until 1am, and never got to doing her shopping list!

So after we finished eating, we worked on her list, and even had a recent flyer to check out some sale prices.

That done, I was soon at the store, and even took advantage of some of their sales to get stuff for ourselves. We are still avoiding dirtying dishes as much as possible until we can use our plumbing again, so I wanted to pick up more sandwich meats at the deli. There are a few cuts that they have at the best prices I’ve seen anywhere. When I got there, I saw that most of this group had actually gone up in price – but they were still well below even the sale prices I’ve seen elsewhere. One type didn’t go up in price at all. So I could basically get twice as much meat as what I got at the other store – at sale prices – and still paid less. There were a few other things at sale prices I was able to take advantage of, though this being close to the end of the month, the budget is pretty low.

The good thing is, our temperatures have warmed up enough that I could leave the bags of my own purchases in the box of the truck without using insulated bags, and not worry about things freezing for quite some time! In fact, as I write this, it’s past 7pm, and we are still at a lovely -13C/8F right now! Granted, the wind chill is -21C/-6F, but after getting hit with the polar vortexes, that isn’t too bad at all!

Which meant that I didn’t have to hurry off after putting away my mother’s groceries. I was able to do some light housekeeping for her before heading out.

Before leaving, I messaged home to ask one of my daughters to meet me at the garage to help carry things in, so I wouldn’t have to pull into the yard or make two trips. Since I was the one carrying the 40 pound bag of cat food, I went ahead and did their evening feeding and warm water top up, while my daughter put away the groceries.

I am absolutely convinced The Grink has not left the isolation shelter even once, since the ramp door was opened!

Then, since we have lysine again, I broke out the Bullet. The lysine powder is pretty granular, so I grind it to a fine powder that will stick to the kibble. The first couple of batches were ground with raw pumpkin seeds until I ran out of seeds. That jar went for the outside cats, as the pumpkin will help them combat worms, and I’m sure the smallest cats are small because they have worms. Putting something in their food is pretty much the only way we can treat them, since most of them are too feral to catch, even if we could afford to take them to a vet.

The inside cats got cat soup with lysine in it.

Of course, there were dishes to be done. Since the septic tank is full and can’t be drained until the pump is fixed, we can’t drain water down the sink. That means doing dishes in one basin, rinsing in another, then tossing the dirty water outside. We keep pots and bowls in all our sinks right now, so we can still run water before we fill a kettle, wash an item or two, wash our hands, brush our teeth or sponge bathe, then take the containers outside to dump out the dirty water.

Inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as not being able to use the toilet!

Hopefully, this will only be until Sunday, when my brother comes out. I’m really, really hoping the pump can just be fixed, and we won’t have to find somewhere to buy a new one. There’s only one place that I know of that carries the one brand that still makes these pumps, and I have never seen them in stock. The city locations don’t seem to ever have them in stock, which makes sense. City people aren’t on septic systems.

Well, it is what it is. We deal with the hand we’ve got!

What else can we do?

Today, at least, I’ve managed to get quite a few things done while also being able to help my mother out, which saves on multiple trips! Tomorrow, if all goes well, we’ll load up the truck and I’ll finally make a trip to the dump. We’re supposed to reach a high of -4C/25F tomorrow!

I am so looking forward to that!!

The Re-Farmer

Home again

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Well, I’m certainly glad I got the truck in, even with the bitter cold!

As I write this, we are at -23C/-9F but it’s sunny enough that, instead of a wind chill, our “feels like” is -21C/-6F Which actually feels balmy, compared to this morning!

When I got home, I found this fluffball enjoying the sun.

I was actually able to pet this one, this morning. He (she?) was in a cat bed in the sun room, back towards me, so I snuck up and started giving shoulder rubs. S/he turned to look at me, but I think was just too cold to run away. There was frost on its face fur!

I can see why the vets would think our current crop of fluffy cats are Norwegian Forest Cats! We just thought of them as long haired tabbies.

Anyhow.

I headed out later than I normally would have – making sure to give the truck time to warm up! – as I wanted to go to the post office. The store it’s in closes at noon today, so if I didn’t pick it up this morning, it would have to wait until tomorrow, and we’re going to have a cat in the truck, tomorrow.

The store opens at 9 and drop off time at the garage was at 9:30. It typically takes half an hour to get to town, so I sent a quick message saying I might be late. Much to my surprise, I was actually 10 minutes early! No slow vehicles to get stuck behind, no road conditions to slow me down, it was a perfect drive in! I hadn’t realized how rare that is, considering what I’ve become used to, lately.

While dropping off the keys, we went over what was being done. He had me for fixing a slow leak, and I said the valve would need replacing. It’s been a long time since they checked the valves for leaks, plus my tires have been rotated since then, so he was going to check the whole tire, anyhow. I remembered to ask if he could check the oil level, too. It’s been so cold, I haven’t done it in a while. I was also down to have the passenger side windshield piper replaced. I forgot to tear off the loose bit, so the entire drive to town, I was hearing the flappityflappity sound of the loose piece hitting the truck in the wind. 😄

My plan had been to go to the motel next door, where there is a Chinese restaurant, to have breakfast and wait – it was only expected to be an hour – then pick up a few things at the grocery store after getting the truck back. Walking to the main doors of the hotel, however, I found the doors locked. It was still too early!

While the walk was only about a minute, maybe two, I was already feeling the cold, so I went across the street to the grocery store. There was no way I was going to walk into the downtown area to try and find someplace open I could stay at. I knew the closest one didn’t open until 10, anyhow.

I didn’t have much to pick up, but I took my time about it. The deli had hot breakfast sandwiches available, so I picked up a couple of those for breakfast. They were wrapped and the stickers had a price, but nothing about what kind they were. I thought they might be breakfast bagels, but they turned out to be sausage and egg on an English muffin. They were quite good, too. Just on the small side. 😁 A heartier breakfast would have been preferred, in this cold! I ended up eating in the grocery store vestibule, because there was nowhere else indoors available. I also ended up getting a couple of soft sided grocery bags, one insulated, one not, since all of mine where in the truck. I’d picked up another whole chicken for the freezer – they are still on sale, with even the heaviest chickens in the $10 range. According to my receipt, I saved $7.85 by weight. They still had the 5 count bags of avocados available and on sale. They were already down to $4.99, when they are usually around $7.99, but my loyalty card brought it down to $2.99. We still have some at home, so I only got one bag.

After taking my time to get everything, then taking my time to eat my breakfast sandwiches, I finally headed back to the garage across the street. It was already noticeably warmer by then, too. It was only a couple of degrees warmer, but enough to really feel the difference.

The truck hadn’t been taken in, yet. A delivery truck had come in, and the trailer was long enough to block both bay doors. They were done unloading, though. I went in to get my key, so I could put the groceries in the truck, but the mechanic already had it. He just to move a couple of small vehicles (including the most adorable import trucks; I believe they are common in Europe, but they are rare, here) out of the bay once the trailer was moved, then he could bring my truck in. That gave me time to put my bags in the truck. He’d asked me to start the engine for him if I could, but he was done before I was!

With the truck going in about half an hour late, that meant I still had an hour or so to kill. Not that I was in any hurry, but there just aren’t a lot of options for places to go and just hang out, in the winter. It was late enough that I knew the DQ would be open, and they were pretty close, so that’s where I went. I was their first order of the day, and still the only customer, by the time I left! Which was good for me; I got to miss the lunch crowd.

When I meandered my way back to the garage, I saw the company truck was gone, so it was just the mechanic. The truck’s tire was still off and waiting.

He confirmed that it was the valve that was leaking, however they found that the sensor’s battery was simply dead. Considering it would be 14 years old, that’s not too unexpected!

So I waited in their office for the owner to come back. I had two options for the fix. I could get the valve replaced with a valve and no sensor. That would be cheaper, but I would have the warning light on my console display all the time. Or I could get the valve and sensor replaced. Which is what I was budgeted for, anyhow.

He told me he’d checked all the tires, and got zero readings. None of the sensors are working anymore! I know at least one was working, last summer, as we got a low tire warning. That was what got us looking for the problem in the first place, and where we found that three out of four valves had slow leaks. Two were barely noticeable, while one – the one getting fixed today – was leaking more. He suggested we get the others replaced, as we can afford it, which is what I was already planning to do.

So the sensor got replaced and programmed. If you click through to the next image in the Instagram slide show, above, you’ll see our bill.

Oh! Instagram cut it off! I had set it to full size. Crud.

For all but the oil, the .99 was cut off the prices. I’m glad I got the wiper done here. It turns out he can get them at discounted prices. If I’d gone to Canadian Tire, which I might have been able to do tomorrow, the same blade would have cost closer to $50. He also topped up my oil with half a liter, which was nice. The synthetic oil for our truck is quite expensive, so paying for just half a liter is fine by me! The truck will be back next month for an oil change, after getting the engine cleaned and the oil sensor replaced. Hopefully, that will get all residual moisture out of the system, and we will no longer have issues with it.

Anyhow, the grand total came out to $149 and change. Lower than I had budgeted for, which is nice.

What was also nice was seeing that he didn’t charge me for labour!

That done, I just made a stop to fill the tank (I was just under 3/4 tank, and it cost almost $62 to fill, at $1.569/L), then headed home.

Along with the adorable fluffy baby in the first photo, I saw many other cats going in and out of the garage! That always makes me nervous, as I drive in.

I also spotted these two.

It looks like I caught The Grink while he was winking!

The sunshine through those windows would be making it extra cozy in there. For all that there is a 250w heat lamp aimed towards the back, I’ve been finding frozen remains of wet cat food in their bowl! The bowl isn’t directly in front of the heat lamp, but it is right next to the bed they are in. Even the spoonful I put on the shelf above had been mostly frozen.

Gosh, I wish Fluffy would let us handle her! She needs pets. And hugs. And cuddles. So does The Grink! We haven’t even been able to touch her (or him), never mind check her incision.

Midnight was hanging around when I came by, but not close enough that I could see his shaved spot. 😄 It’s too bad he got out of the isolation shelter, but at least it was him, and not her. Neuters are far less of a concern. I was happy to see he still has his collar, too.

So the tire is now done, and the oil is topped up. We are good to go for tomorrow’s trip to the vet! The isolation shelter will be opened up again, and the other cats will be able to snuggle up in there again. Considering I regularly counted as many as 15 cats in the upper level at once, I’d say that might explain why I’m seeing so many cats in the rafters of the garage lately!

In other things, after I got home, I made sure to call the eye clinic in the city. My mother’s appointment was for next week, but she really balked at going. Which I totally understand. She is still recovering from her edema, so the more time she has on her water pills, before a long drive like this, the better. That got rescheduled to a month from now.

The weird thing was getting a call from home care. They wanted to confirm the lock box code, which surprised me. Did my mother not get her morning meds? Apparently she did, so… why confirm the code? The other concern was that my mother’s inhaler wasn’t in the box. My mother had brought the one from the hospital home in her purse, so it wasn’t with the bubble packs. The new inhaler, still in its box, probably was. We’re not as concerned about the inhaler as with my mother messing with her medications – the new lock box came in yesterday, so last night, my brother and his wife drove out to set it up for her. My mother tried to insist, she can manage her medications herself, but my brother just told her, doctor’s orders. In fact, if they had known she would be without a lock box when she got home, because the first one was too small for her bubble packs, they would not have discharged her.

The weird part was when the home care lady tried to confirm a code for a lock box I knew nothing about. When I expressed my confusion, she asked, isn’t there a lock box for the building?

Now, I know they have a lock box for the fire department/first responders, right at the main entrance, but a medical lock box for the building? I’ve never heard of one!

I did have to ask if my mother actually got her medications this morning, if there was doubt about the code on the new lock box. Now that I think about it, the lock box was set up before my mother’s last med assist of the day, so if there was an issue, it would have first happened last night, and I would have gotten a call then. As far as she could see from the files, my mother did get her medications. It was just the inhaler that was of concern, because it was not in the lock box. In the end, it was decided the inhaler would be kept in the lock box, too, just for consistency.

At least that is taken care of!

Meanwhile, I’m glad to be home and no longer having to drive anywhere until tomorrow. I was hearing weather reports on the radio while I was driving. The entire province is still under an ongoing extreme cold warning, with some places expecting wind chills of -43C/-45F – all well to the south of us, though. According to my weather app, our region’s cold warning is expected to end at 8:18pm this evening.

How strangely specific.

Our overnight lows are still expected to reach below -30C/-22F, so I’m guessing that means the wind chills in our area are no longer expected to reach the -40C/F range.

I probably sound like a broken record by now, but I am so done with winter right now.

We are still at our high of the day (-21C/-6F). At least the sun room thermometer was reading 0C/32F when I checked a little while ago. It may not be the most effective sun room, but it’s enough to have some decent passive solar heat, even on days like today!

*sigh*

Time to go feed and water the outside cats, before the temperature starts dropping again.

The Re-Farmer

Got a work out this morning!

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Well, not so much me, but little Spewie!

Things kept warming up slowly overnight and, as I write this, we’ve been at our high of the day (-4C/25F) for some time, and will stay there for several more hours. After a slight dip in temperature this morning, we’re going to keep warming up again overnight. Tomorrow’s high keeps changing, but the range has been from -1C/30F to 1C/34F

I took advantage of this. Once my rounds were done, I stayed out and got little Spewie out of the garage. This was also going to give me a chance to use the new heavy duty, 100′ outdoor extension cord my husband picked up for me. This one is designed to withstand both extreme cold and extreme hot temperatures – so whether we’re at -30C/-22F or 30C/86F, it will be able to handle it!

I just double checked. On the cold side, it’s rated to stay flexible at -50C/-58F. The heat resistant jacket is rated to 70C/158F

So we’re good! 😄😄

My plan had been to do the driveway and paths in the outer yard. I started with the paths, including a new path to the pump shack. Since I was already on that side of the garage and had enough cord for the job, I did the paths around the cat shelters, to the compost pile, outhouse, back of the garage, and the litter pellet compost pile behind the outhouse.

Then I cleared the driving area.

I’m standing next to the kibble house to take the above picture. I widened the space at the bottom of the photo, to make room for the truck to back up towards the sun room. When I backed into the yard to load up the garbage the other day, I kept hitting a pile of snow along the cat path I was standing in for the photo.

There is now enough room to drive in, turn around, back up – and still have room to open doors and walk around the truck.

By the time I finished here, I was done for the day. I just cleared one last section of path, plus right in front of the garage, before putting everything away. The driveway can be done tomorrow! Plus a path to the barn. We can get through the area, if needed, but by clearing it now, when things warm up, the remaining snow will melt away faster.

Added bonus was coming inside to a hot lunch and a giant mug of freshly brewed tea. 💖🍵🍚

It felt so good to be outside and getting work done! I just love it!

The outside kitties were not impressed, though. At least, not the more feral ones. Spewie is pretty quiet, being a tiny electric snow blower, but between the noise and the snow being hurled into the air (and sometimes blown back into my face when we got a gust!) was just too much for them.

There is a down side to getting all that cleared, though.

I made sure not to push myself but, once inside, it didn’t take long for my entire body to stiffen up and start hurting a lot. I ended up taking a couple of my prescription painkillers. Which I was hoping to avoid, since I’ve been saving those to take before bed. The prescription is to take one or two capsules, once a day. By taking them now, it means I can’t take them before bed. Last night, thought I was doing pretty good and took only one before bed, and it just didn’t cut it. Even taking two, it eases most of the pain, but not my hips, so I’m still rotating like a rotisserie chicken at the best of times. Taking one helped with most of my joints, but my hips were hurting enough that they kept waking me up.

I’ll have to talk to my new doctor about that, the next time I see her.

Meanwhile, I’m prescription pain-killered up for now, and will need to watch myself for the rest of the day, so I can do the driveway tomorrow. I can still take acetaminophen for the night, as they are the same class of painkillers. I just can’t take anything like ibuprofen while I’m using this prescription painkiller.

Getting all that space in the yard cleared is worth it for me, though. It just felt so good to get some manual labour done!

The Re-Farmer

Moving forward

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First, the cuteness!

I would really like to be able to get that fluffy lady and get her spayed! She does sometimes let me pet her, but not very often of late.

This morning, I tried for a head count and got 29, which is the highest I’ve counted in a while. Not sure what to make of that, but cats will cat, I guess!

A brief update on our plumbing situation. Any time I hear a pump go off, I am checking the basement, even if it’s just the well pump. The septic pump makes a different sound now that the diverter is attached but, strangely, it sounds just like the fan in our bathroom!

There is still a leak somewhere, and I’ve had to top up the filter a few times. Sometimes, the filter cap will be tightly seals. Other times, it won’t be. There was one time I checked when I heard it go off, and the filter was low on water, but there was inflow happening. I waited and watched, and the inflow pressure increased as the water level in the filter increased faster than it drained out, and soon it was properly full and working right.

I updated my brother on all of this. He asked for some photos from different angles, and I figured he was planning to come out and see what he could do about it. Something he did eventually confirm, saying he was going to try something with the “back valve” on the pump. I assume there are valves, but I don’t know anything about what they are or where. I look forward to seeing what he does and learning more about it. Meanwhile, my SIL confirmed that she would be driving my brother out and drop him off, so he can take back their car that they loaned us.

My younger daughter and I needed to go into town to pick up our prescriptions today so, of course, we took advantage of the trip to run other errands.

This meant using the truck. I can’t be using my brother’s car, just because it’s there. I’d used the OBDII scanner last night and confirmed it was still the same sensor that was the issue, so there was really no excuse.

It ran just fine, but I really hate having the check engine light on, and the oil pressure gauge not working.

Our first stop in town was, of course, the pharmacy. My new painkiller prescription was filled yesterday, but my daughter’s was just put on file; when my prescription arrived, they called us about it, asking if I wanted it filled. They never called about my daughter’s prescriptions. They were going to need some time to fill it, so I left her to wait for it and did our other errands. The first was to return that security camera I’d picked up, so we could monitor the septic pump without running up and down the stairs all the time. We never did figure out why it wouldn’t connect to our WiFi.

The exchange was pretty straightforward and quick, so I had time to stop at a grocery store near the pharmacy. It’s not one we normally go to, but it was on the way. All I needed to pick up was butter, but on the way out I’d asked if my daughter had eaten anything, and she hadn’t. It was coming up on lunch time, and I knew she’d been up at around 3am and unable to get back to sleep. So I picked up something for her to eat as well.

That done, I went back to the pharmacy, where my daughter was still waiting. They didn’t have one of the meds as a generic in stock, so she got a name brand, instead. Another, they could only fill half of it. It didn’t take too much longer, though. My daughter used to work at this pharmacy, so she got to catch up a bit with former co-workers.

Since I was able to run our other errands while she waited, once everything was paid for, we were done in town.

This town, at least!

We were starting to run low on kibble, especially for the outside cats, so we made the trip to my mother’s town, next, and to the feed store.

The price on the 40 pound bags has gone up.

The lysine I’d ordered wasn’t in. It’s been quite a while since I requested it, so I was a bit surprised.

From there, we picked up some fuel and headed for home, with a quick side trip to the post office. I was giving one more day for the letter mail that got delayed by the postal strike. If it didn’t come today, I was going to assume it was lost and would have to make arrangements.

I was pretty happy to see that it had finally arrived – but also found a parcel slip. I was not expecting any parcels until next week!

The post office hadn’t reopened for the afternoon, yet, so I couldn’t pick it up. They’d reopen in only 20 minutes, though, so my daughter and I headed home and unloaded. She headed in to put things away, and I went back to the post office, just in time for it to reopen.

Look what came in early!

This is what my brother and I want to try on the ejector. We can’t use the 100′ extension cord my brother set up when he was going to try his heat gun, as it is for 2 prong plugs. We have two, but they are both in use right now. Once my brother retrieves his car, though, one will be freed up, as it’s currently what his block heater is plugged into. I don’t know that we’ll set that up tomorrow, though. If the source of the problem really is the over saturated soil under the ejector, thawing the stand pipe out isn’t going to do much good. It’ll just freeze again. And we certainly don’t want to be switching from the emergency diverter to the ejector on the pump, if only to have to switch it back again later.

We shall see what my brother thinks, when he gets here tomorrow.

Meanwhile, now that we no longer have a clogged drain from the kitchen sink, and the diverter is mostly working fine, we’ve been catching up on dishes and other cleaning jobs. We still haven’t needed to do laundry, though. I’m still on constant alert for the sound of the septic pump; I’m the only one that can hear it when it goes off, and only when I’m in my office/bedroom, which puts a limit on what I can get done.

I really hope whatever my brother has come up with, works!

I must say, though; it may be a pain in the butt to be constantly listening for and checking on that pump, things are a LOT more relaxed now that both the diverter is working, and that clogged drain is cleared!

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get a much better night’s sleep tonight, with these new painkillers.

At least as much as the cats will allow… 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

What. A. Day!

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The important thing is, we can use our kitchen sink and laundry drain again! Yay!

We couldn’t wait until today to do our laundry, though, so yesterday we did something like four loads of laundry, with the hose draining out the door. The furthest end of the sump pump hose we’re using curls, preventing it from draining completely, so I kept going outside to lift the hose, from the door to the end, to get it empty before it froze.

This morning, we were expecting the plumber to arrive first, then a prescription delivery, hopefully before my daughter and I had to head out. My daughter had started her shower just as I was about to start heading outside for my morning rounds and to open the gate, when I heard a strange noise.

The septic pump had finally been triggered!

So I immediately dashed downstairs to check the filter.

Which was empty and running dry.

I shut the pump off, opened the filter, primed it again and turned the pump back on. It worked great! When it was done, the filter stayed full enough that the filter basket inside was floating and spinning slightly in the water – something I haven’t seen it do in quite a while!

From there, it was outside to feed and water the kitties, then do my usual checks, which this time included checking the outflow pipe. Everything looked clear, and there was no sign of backflow towards the house.

Yay!!!!

While doing my rounds, I got the truck running for a while, then popped in the OBDII scanner. The check engine light was on and the oil pressure gauge was still at zero. I did a full scan and got the same code as before: the oil pressure sensor that has already been replaced and cleaned.

At least it’s just triggering a check engine light, and not setting off the flipping alarm with the “turn off engine” warning.

From there, I cleared the codes and left the engine running until it shut itself off, as I’d used the remote starter to turn it on. Though it is much warmer today, I still plugged the block heater back in.

With our trip to the doctor’s office, though, I planned to use my brother’s car, which is parked and plugged in, outside. We had a bit of snow last night that needed to be brushed off, but that’s it.

Not long after I was back inside and checking the trail cam files, I got a call from the plumber. He was on his way and wanted to confirm directions to our place.

They can be a bit difficult to explain at times.

They got here soon after. Since the entry is where the laundry drain is, with the kitchen sink on the other side of the wall, I explained a what was going on there, then we went into the basement where I could show him the rest.

After looking over the pipes in old and new basements, as well as the plumbing under the sink, he decided to find a better way than trying to run his auger through where the last guy did. Access there is not easy, and it was put back together with adhesive. He didn’t want to cut anything there.

Since we knew the clog started past the laundry drain, he did it another way. He cut away part of the pipe in the root cellar, on the kitchen side of where the laundry pipe joined (not that he could have cut it on the other side, since it goes into a wall, there) and removed a couple of inches. It would then get sealed up with a rubber union and steel clamps, so that it would be easy to access, if we ever needed to have this done again. In fact, with our big drain auger, we’d be able to do it ourselves.

I don’t feel so bad about not trying to open things up where the other plumber went through now.

He used his smaller powered auger on the drain, and he really felt it when he hit the clog. After he worked on it for a while, with his assistant holding the other end of the pipe out of the way, he had his assistant go into the other basement to see if he could tell if the auger had reached the corner under the bathroom. I went along with him.

Not only had he reached the corner, but I could hear the tip of the auger rattling in the pipe near the old basement steps. He’d gone through the turn and was about 2/3s of the way down the other pipe to the septic tank.

After clearing things out, he sealed up the pipe, then headed for the kitchen to flush it. This will be our regular maintenance routine. He filled one of the kitchen sinks with straight hot water. After pulling the plug, he squirted some dish detergent into the vortex as it drained.

Then he did it again, with the other sink.

The first time, we could hear a lot of gurgling from the laundry drain pipe. A certain amount of that is normal, as we would be hearing the water pass by where it joined the main pipe. The second time he did it, we heard almost nothing from the laundry drain.

The assistant, meanwhile, was in the basement, making sure the new rubber union wasn’t leaking, and listening along the pipes. They couldn’t hear each other, so I went down and found him following the sound into the old basement. He could hear the water sloshing through the whole way.

I think the sinks were both filled and drained a total of three times each before he was satisfied.

I told him about what we’d found under the sink, and that my daughter had replaced everything but the trap, so he kept an eye on that, too. There were no leaks anywhere, so that was installed just fine.

While all this was going on, we chatted a fair bit. For some things, I explain the history of the plumbing, so far as I knew it. I even showed him our drain auger, and he quite approved. He let me know that, if we ever needed it, he does have a larger one. Hopefully, we never will!

He was one of the plumbers I have been talking to about the ejector, so while following the pipes, I showed him the diverter set up – and that the pump was triggered for the first time since the tank was emptied, just this morning. He was the one that has suggesting setting up an ice fishing tent over it with a heater, but we don’t even know someone we can borrow one from. He also suggested putting straw bales around the ejector, but we don’t have straw bales, either. We did get get straw, it was one of the big round bales, not the small square ones.

Oh, that reminds me…

While talking to the plumbing guy at the hardware store yesterday, we talked about the ejector and how to thaw it. He’s on an ejector system himself and said, this sometimes happen. I told him, it’s been some 50 years, and it’s never frozen before, so why now? He said it could be a few things and started listing some off. The only one I remember was when he said the ground could be saturated.

*dingdingding*

When they excavated down to the pipe to install the ejector, it was full of water. I even asked one of the guys if that was from the leaking old ejector, or if the water table was high. He told me it would be from the leaking ejector.

Which means the ground at the based of the new ejector was indeed saturated. Which would not have been a problem if this was done in the spring or summer. With nothing leaking anymore, it would have eventually drained away. The soil is clay heavy, so it might have taken a while, but it would eventually have dried up.

The ejector, however, was installed in… November? We were lucky not to have snow, which we did get, not long after.

Which means the water the drained to the bottom of the 4″ stack pipe had nowhere to go, and just kept building up and up, until it froze.

So… that rather eliminates any chance of us being able to use the ejector again until spring. The ground is already frozen, so even if we insulated around it, it wouldn’t make a difference.

*sigh*

We’ll figure it out.

The main thing is, we can now use our kitchen sink again!!!

In asking him why it would clog again so quickly after we’d already had it cleared just a couple of years ago, he said that having the laundry and kitchen drain into the main pipe so close together was not really an ideal situation. Between any grease from washing the dishes, to lint and such from the laundry, things build up pretty fast.

I’d been concerned about the pipe that didn’t get cleared, from the bathroom towards the septic. That, however, turns out not to be an issue at all. With all the water from showers and washing – even the toilet flushing – it would have kept that section of pipe pretty clear. There’s a lot less water running through from the kitchen to under the bathroom – and even less, when we started running the laundry drain outside. As the greasy water from the sink swirls its way down the pipe, the gunk would build up faster. Which is why flushing the drain with sink-fulls of hot water and detergent (he suggested using Dawn, as it is the best for grease cutting) regularly is recommended.

I asked him about using the bacteria and enzyme drain maintenance stuff, and he couldn’t really answer, as he doesn’t know much about it.

I also asked him about the possibility of the pipe from the house to the ejector getting clogged, and he said that was highly unlikely.

On top of all the other stuff we talked about, I mentioned that we want to replace the well pump, but there’s a risk of the foot valve breaking apart, so no one wanted to take the chance.

He pffffttt’d to that and said, just put in a check valve. No one really does foot valves anymore.

???

I’ve had three different plumbers look at that well pump. No one mentioned a check valve, so I asked him about it. He looked some up on his phone and found the style that would be used on our pump. He told me, just install that on the pump at the intake from the well, and don’t worry about the foot valve. Even if it breaks up, we’ll still get water.

I asked him, is this something that is new within the past few years?

Nope. They’ve been around for a while.

So now I wonder, why hasn’t any other plumber mentioned it??

Then, since we were walking around the three broken hot water tanks while looking around the basement, I told him about replacing the elements on the hot water tank recently, and what we found on the bottom. He told me, we need a water softening system to put a stop to that.

*sigh*

That’s something my husband has suggested, but a whole house system? That’s really expensive, and do we really want that for the entire house?

As to the cost, he was able to tell me that it’s $2500, installed, if he does it. He didn’t try to sell me on it; just let me know.

So all of that went fairly quickly. Before he left, I gave him my email address for him to send me the bill, so I still don’t know how much it will cost. I should get it tonight some time, but he told me that if I don’t, check my spam folder! That’s been happening a lot, lately, he told me.

That done, we can finally hook up the washing machine’s hose back to the drain pipe, but we haven’t done that, yet. Priority is catching up on dishes!

I wanted to head out early with my daughter for our appointment, but we still had the prescription delivery that I wanted to wait for first, so we could lock the gate behind us when we left. Not too long after the plumber left, someone used the washroom, and I heard the septic pump go off again. No surprise, considering how much hot water got flushed through the pipes!

I went down to check and…

It was running dry again.

I shut it off and primed the filter – the seal on that lid was quite tight – turned it on and it was working fine again. So fine, in fact, that it took only 2, maybe 2 1/2 minutes to drain the tank!

This is how it’s supposed to look.

Hopefully, you won’t have to go to Instagram to wash this.

The moisture underneath is from the water used to prime the filter.

When it was done, the filter stayed nice and full. I paused to update my brother on it (I’d been keeping him up to date with the plumber the whole time, too). As I was doing that, I heard a strange noise from the filter.

A very strange little noise.

And a strange sight.

You might need to turn up your volume to hear it. Somehow, there was air getting in.

I grabbed some paper towel and dried up everything around the filter and pipe joins, then watched and waited before checking them again. Everything was dry. There is no leak.

So what is happening???

One of the things I did a while back was put a brick and a very thin piece of Styrofoam under the filter to support the weight of the water in it. I ended up finding another thin piece to raise it up just a bit higher, so there is now no sag or play at all. I primed the filter again, and that bubbling did not happen again.

Were were good? I don’t know. But I did pass that on to my brother, too!

Not long after, the prescription delivery guy arrived, and my daughter and I were soon headed out to our appointments (after having to chase a kitten out from under my brother’s car!). We left early, making a brief stop in my mother’s town to pick up some lunch at the gas station – they had chicken kabobs available this time, which my daughter loves. Those sell out really fast, and they don’t seem to make more of them throughout the day. By the time we got to the clinic, we were only about 15 minutes early, so I’m glad we headed out when we did.

I went in first for my meet and greet. Her first question was whether or not I already had a doctor, and I explained about my previous doctor moving to another clinic, and having an interim doctor now. I’m sure she’d be fine to keep seeing me, but it’s just more convenient to have the same doctor as my daughter.

So this was mostly a question and answer session and I explained some of the issues I’ve been having, and she is now officially my doctor, too. I mentioned my painkillers just aren’t cutting it anymore, especially since I had to switch to acetaminophen. So I did get a prescription pain killer. I’d mentioned how bad the joint pain can get some days, where every joint in my body hurts. She asked me what supplements I was one, and I told her. She then recommended I go on a B complex instead of the B12 I’m on, as one of the other B vitamins should help me with the joint pain. She also told me to take double the recommended dose. I mentioned the Charlie horses I’ve been getting, but I have also run out of zinc, and suggested picking that up might take care of that, and she said yes. (I’ve also increased my salt intake, before I ran out of zinc, and that’s when the Charlie horses seemed to stop until just recently)

So once I was done, I went across the hall to the pharmacy to pick up the supplements while my daughter was seen next. Then I went to the grocery store that shared the parking lot and picked up a couple of small things we’d run out of at home. From there, I waited in the car for my daughter.

Which is when I got a test from my husband. He’s just picked up a call from the pharmacy for me. They’d received my prescription, and did I want to get it filled right away?

Talk about fast!

Of course, my husband had no idea what they were talking about, yet! So I called the pharmacy and said to go ahead and fill it, and that I’d likely pick it up tomorrow, since I was still in another town.

Then I got a message from my daughter clearing a calendar date in three weeks for another follow up appointment. So that was done, too.

My daughter got some adjusted medications and another prescription. Her bloodwork showed her to be vitamin D deficient. I wasn’t surprised by that. This is Canada, and it’s winter, after all! She has also been referred to an endocrinologist for her PCOS.

So tomorrow, we’ll both go into town to pick up our prescriptions.

This time, I plan to use the truck.

From there, we started for home. Along the way, we stopped in my mother’s town so I could go to a branch of my bank and take out cash, then we stopped at the home of the guy who empties our septic tank to pay our bill. With tip!

We made one more stop on the way back, at the post office. I wasn’t expecting any parcels yet, but there were a couple for my husband and some regular mail. The letter mail I’ve been waiting for since the strike delayed it, still isn’t in, though. This is getting ridiculous.

After that, we could finally head home. I’m sure glad for the longer days, as it wasn’t full dark, yet!

The first thing I did once we brought everything inside was do the evening cat feeding. My husband had let me know my mother had called (he does not answer calls from her), once I was settled, I checked her message. Apparently, when they delivered her new bubble packs, they didn’t deliver her inhaler. So I called her back and she told me her adjusted dose bubble packs were delivered, but there was no puffer. She then started going on about how it was a guy who delivered it this time, and she didn’t recognize him, etc. So I asked if she called the pharmacy to ask why it wasn’t there, and she said no, then tried to go back to talking about the delivery guy. I told her, she needed to call the pharmacy right away.

Which is when she asked if I could do it, because her English isn’t so good.

Ah. Okay!

Then she gave me the number, so I didn’t have to look it up.

The thing is, my mother’s doctor’s appointment was on Monday. Her prescriptions were delivered on Tuesday. Today is Thursday. Why didn’t she say anything on Tuesday??

So I called the pharmacy and quickly realized why my mother didn’t want to call herself. They have an automated answering service, which she has a hard time with at the best of times. With this one, after I made the first selection (after having to listen to a promo for vaccines first), it put me through another spiel for other choices. When I selected one of those, which turned out to be the wrong one. It took me to another and, as I was going through that, it started asking for things like the prescription number. WTF??? It did give the option to go back to a previous menus, and the net thing I knew, I was listening to the vaccine promo again.

I finally got to a real, live pharmacist.

They know be my now. 😄

When I explained what my mother had told me, the pharmacist said it was there. She’d put it in the bag herself.

I told her, my mother said it wasn’t, and she suggested it might be on the bottom of the bag, and described the box to me. It’s purple, so it would be easy to see!

I called my mother back and explained it should be in the bag with her bubble packs.

Oh! Let me go check.

It was there.

My mother had never looked in the bag. She had expected the delivery person to hand it to her seperately.

My mother was supposed to start her new bubble packs immediately, setting the current one aside, to be taken back to the pharmacy, so they could update the dose on one of her meds for her.

I didn’t get a chance to ask, but it sounds like she just kept using the same bubble pack instead of switching to the ones with the correct dosage in it.

*sigh*

I let her go, though, so she could go over the instructions for the inhaler.

I’m starting to wonder if she’s up to even using one.

Something I will have to follow up on.

Meanwhile…

This evening, I heard the septic pump go off again, so I went down to check. The filter was empty again! This time, however, I could see there was a very slow flow was water going in. It wasn’t running quite dry, but the flow from the tank was barely more than a splash. I stopped it and primed the filter again (it was tightly sealed), and it ran great after that. When it stopped, the filter was still full of water, and no sign of bubbles to show if there was some sort of air leak.

If this thing needs to be primed every time the pump goes off, that’s going to be a problem. I’m the only one that can hear it go off, and the camera I got to monitor it is going to be returned tomorrow, because it won’t connect to our WiFi.

This is incredibly frustrating.

If there is anyone more knowledgeable than me reading this and has some idea of what’s going on, please let me know! I’m running out of ideas.

As for me, I am done with this day.

I am so glad the plumber could come in this morning, and that we got that clog cleared. We learned a lot from him while he was here, too, and have steps to take to keep it from happening again – or at least keep it from happening again too soon!

I’m happy to learn about the check valve that would allow us to get that well pump changed and not worry about the foot valve.

I’m glad to finally and officially have a new doctor, and that my daughter got that referral to an endocrinologist, though it will likely take months before she actually sees one.

I’m glad the emergency diverter is working, even with the flow problems.

I’m thankful to have my brother’s car to drive today, even though it would have been just fine using the truck. I’m just paranoid about the truck. We need to get their car back to them soon.

I’m thankful for my other daughter’s financial help that paid for the septic guy, and is helping to pay for the plumber, too.

I may be done with this day, but it really was a very good day!

The Re-Farmer

Productive

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I’ve just got home from errands and just realized, it’s not even 1pm as I start this! It feels like it should be later.

I needed to go to the town north of us to pick up our beef share this morning, so I asked my daughter to do the morning rounds while I checked on the truck and stuff. The front tires were just low enough to be worth firing up the compressor and topping them up. It was -24C/-11F with a wind chill of -32C/-26F at the time, so I ran the engine for a while, too. I did have to shut it off while pumping one of the tires, though. The breeze was blowing the exhaust right into that corner of the garage!

I did help my daughter as she was feeding the outside cats, giving the isolation babies, their wet cat food treat. Eye Baby really wanted out this morning! Well, it’ll just be one more day. Tomorrow, we will be opening up the door and setting the entry box over the opening again, so cats can freely go in and out again.

I left quite early so that I could get other stuff done before meeting up in our usual spot to get our beef share. The general store out post office is in closes at noon today, so I figured I’d try the post office, first.

Zero mail, still. Not even junk mail. The back-to-work order came into effect yesterday, though. I expect rural communities are going to be pretty low on the priority list for getting deliveries.

So I picked up a sandwich (freshly made at our one restaurant, kitty corner across the street) and a drink for my breakfast, then headed north.

My first stop was the feed store, and to look for heated water bowls.

They did have small heated water bowls, which is what I was after, since the big ones stop working so quickly. The price was insane, though. The volume it holds is less than our small heated water bowls, but it cost as much as a large one. The quality, however, was noticeably better. With everywhere else being out of stock, I went ahead and got one, along with a couple more 40 pound bags of kibble.

For the beef share delivery, we always meet in a grocery store parking lot – the only grocery store in town – and I still had time, so I went in to do a bit of shopping. I didn’t need much, and the prices for most things are quite a bit higher, but they have a remarkable selection for such a rural store, so I took my time looking around to see if there was something else I wanted to get besides a carton of milk. 😄 I did end up getting some buttermilk, which I rarely do. I think it will be great for the next time we make cornbread.

That done, I didn’t have very long to wait in the truck before the lady arrived with my beef share. We could only do a 1/8th share this time, so it was just two boxes. The shares were smaller this year, as they butchered heifers this year instead of steers, so with our monthly payments, we actually ended up with a refund. I would like to do a quarter beef again, so I asked about the possibility of sending them payments starting in January.

She asked me to hold off on that. They need to figure out what they will be doing this year. They already had to switch to beef shares only, moving away from the individual cuts and freezer packs. The market price they would get for their beef is pretty good right now, so it doesn’t make sense for them to hold onto cattle through to the fall right now. Plus, with everything becoming more expensive in general, they are going to have to increase their price. Right now, with the beef shares, they are charging $6.50/pound hanging weight, and they’ll be losing money if they don’t adjust that. She won’t know until March or so, what direction they will be going. Once that’s worked out, she has a list of regular customers – including us – that they will contact directly. If we don’t find out until March, though, we’ll probably end up doing a 1/8th beef again, which she understands.

As we were talking, we shared some frustrations. For her, as someone who sells beef shares, she has a real problem with other ranchers that sell their shares at a fixed price, rather than by weight. You never know until you get the hanging weight, how much each share will actually work out to be. Which is how we ended up with a refund. You can’t just decide a whole beef will be X amount ahead of time, and then divide it by whatever share someone is getting. At least, not ethically! It makes things harder for ranchers like her, too, because people catch on that they’re not being charged fairly. I didn’t even know there were people selling beef shares with fixed prices. I’ve only see it done by weight.

So we shall see how things work out for them. Meanwhile, I’ll just set the payments I would be making to them aside. I would rather send it to them, to help feed the animal we will be eating, but that’s okay. And if they end up not doing beef shares next year, well, that’s just more in the savings account.

With my other errands done, it was straight home after picking up the beef. I pulled into the yard to unload, then gave the outside cats a small feeding to get them away from the truck so I could park it.

Once that was done, I empties the boxes into the freezer. With the extra shopping we’ve done for Christmas and New Years, there isn’t a lot of room! We couldn’t have fit a quarter beef in there, that’s for sure.

We got quite a few 2 pound packages of ground beef, a whole lot of steaks and several roasts, plus beef bones. Now that we have the Instant Pot, I’m thinking we could try using it to make bone broth – something with onions and garlic in it, so it’s for our own use only, not for the cats! I actually found some packages of bones, both beef and pork, while making space in the freezer. They’re starting to get freezer burned, so we should make some broth with them for the cats – and free up some freezer space!

Once that was put away, I took down the old extension cord that the fried out heated water bowl had been plugged into, and replaced it with the new one I picked up not long ago, then set up the new water bowl. There was still some liquid water in the fried out bowl, so I poured that into the new bowl. Remarkably, the water started getting slushy on top, rather quickly! I got the critter cam plugged in, too, and at first it didn’t work. The app told me the camera was offline. ?? I plugged things in and out a few times and it started working, so I don’t know quite what went wrong.

The new bowl has been accepted, though!

The old one, with nothing but ice in it, got set aside not far from there the heat lamp is. It might actually get warm enough to melt under there. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of the cats using the heat lamp, it can stay there.

I had lots of curious kitties while I was setting up the new extension cord!

I was done and tying off the outside doors again when I noticed there were three amigos at the window, watching me, so I decided to take their picture.

I ended up catching a bit of action!

So much for being amigos! 😄

Anyhow.

Everything is now brought in, put away and set up.

It’s been a productive day, and that makes me happy.

The Re-Farmer

An expensive outing

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Well, my daughter and I did manage to get out and run multiple errands today.

Way too expensive ones.

Last night, however, I got a message from my brother, letting me know he was planning to come out. He had some stuff he needed to do with the vehicles he’s got parked out here now, including the tractors. Unfortunately, he was expecting to be here at a time when we would probably still be out and about. I let him know that, and that we would likely miss him entirely. He doesn’t need me to be there, but I do enjoy his company, and would help him, if I could be of any use to him. Ah, well.

Before we headed out, of course, the morning rounds were done. The wind was from the south and bitterly cold, so I didn’t quite get the full rounds done. According the the weather app, we were at -7C/19F at the time, with a windchill of -14C/7F. I don’t know which weather station had that reading, but it felt WAY colder than that in the wind. It was blowing in from the south, too, we were getting the full brunt of it.

With the cold temperatures, the outside cats’ kibble in the sunroom has been disappearing fast, as well as in the shelf shelter bowls, but the kibble house and under the water bowl shelter trays have been building up. It’s just been too cold for the cats to eat it, even as sheltered as they are. They’ll get to it when things warm up, but for now, they’re avoiding those trays as much as they can. The catio food bowl gets emptied, though!

The outside heated water bowl was completely dry, and the sun room water bowl had just layers of ice shards left. The cats were really appreciating having warm water to drink!

I actually am using hot water from the tap these days – with the new powered anode rod in our hot water tank, there is no longer a smell, so we aren’t shocking the tank with hydrogen peroxide anymore. That means we no longer need to get the kettle going every time.

I was concerned about the isolation kitties. Especially Eye Baby. His eyes and nose are leaking so much, and he’s still such a small kitty. It’s cold enough in there, even with the heat lamp set to face the back of the shelter and the overall temperatures increasing, that the wet cat food we’re giving them is mostly frozen. It’s right next to a sliding window, so that corner is colder. The kittens, however, have been hanging out on their lounging shelf directly in front of where the heat lamp is now facing, so they are obviously noticing a difference and taking advantage of it. They simply need more heat than what the 150 watt ceramic bulbs are capable of.

With that in mind, our first stop on the way out was the feed store. I got a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats – they had a different brand that I tried this time – and I found their heat bulbs. They didn’t have the ceramic ones, but that didn’t surprise me. Those are usually sold for terrariums. They had 250 watt incandescent bulbs in red or white. The white was slightly cheaper, so I got those. They came in a two pack, too.

They did not have any heated water bowls. When I asked, the guy said there had been one this morning, but it was no longer on the shelf. Someone beat us to it!

I did order another 4 pounds of lysine.

Once done there, we stopped at a gas station to top up the tank and get some energy drinks for the road – neither of us got much sleep last night! As I was about to go inside after filling the tank, though, I spotted a bird, on the pavement near the sidewalk along the building. Just sitting there. Frozen! I ended up getting a paper towel and put it in the garbage can. Poor thing. It may have been frozen solid, but I still didn’t want a car driving over it.

After the gas station, it was off to the nearer city.

Our first stop was the Walmart area. My daughter had her own shopping list, so she went in ahead while I hit a Staples in the same parking lot, first. My daughter has been updating her resume and wants to print it out, but my printer is out of ink in two colours – almost all from the automatic head cleaning. I’d last bought the XL size of cartridges, because that was what I could afford at the time, and those have very little ink in them. When a colour runs out, the printer won’t even print in black only, which is so frustrating.

Oh, I just remembered… the printer has been printing as if a portrait oriented file is being printed in landscape form. It didn’t do that when we first installed the printer on my new computer, but suddenly switched, and we have not been able to figure out how to fix it. All the settings are telling it to print as normal. If that’s still happening, we still won’t be able to print her resume! It would be practically unreadable.

Well, I’ll be doing test prints and cleaning the heads after the ink is installed, so we’ll see.

As for the ink, I was able to get the XXL size, with double the ink in the cartridges, as a 3 pack. I couldn’t have gotten the XL size even if I wanted to, as they only had those as individual packages – but no individual package of the XXL size!

One package of ink cost over $124, after taxes and enviro fees.

*choke*

The individual XL size cartridges, with half the ink, were almost $30 each. Add in the enviro fees and taxes, they wouldn’t have been much cheaper.

Ouch.

After leaving the ink in the truck, I met up with my daughter and we started out with breakfast (even though it was almost noon by then) at McRaunchies. Then we went our separate ways with our shopping lists. I had just a few things on my list, but I did get a few extras. One of the things I almost forgot to get was a new 12′ extension cord – an outdoor one – to replace the old one that the sun room heated water bowl was plugged into. That cord has been there since long before we moved here, and is just a household cord. After finding the melted spot on the bottom of the heated water bowl, I figure it was time for an upgrade, with something that can handle how cold it can sometimes get in there.

My daughter wasn’t able to find most of what was on her and her sister’s shopping list. My list had more kibble for the inside cats, bread and eggs, but I got more canned soup that was on sale, some items my husband requested, and a few odds and ends. I even found some affordable breakaway collars to replace the lost ones on the outside neutered cats, and a couple of inexpensive cat toys for the isolation kitties. I actually got quite a bit for the $160+ I spent there.

No heated water bowl, though.

So after paying for our stuff, we tried the Canadian Tire across the street.

They didn’t have any, either.

Well, I still plan to hit the feed store in the town north of us, as it has more retail stuff. I know they have heated bowls. I just don’t know if they have the smaller size I’m looking for, since the big ones seem to die a lot more quickly. I will be rescheduling to pick up our beef share in that town, next week, so I can check them out, then.

Since my daughter didn’t find everything on her list, we then went to a regular grocery store. Enough time had passed by this time that I was starting to get hungry again, so while my daughter went hunting for stuff on her list, I got some food we could eat in the truck – and a fruit cake as a treat for my husband. Just a little one. The size I used to get for him, which isn’t very big, either, has increased in price by almost 50%. Even the smaller one I got was more expensive than what the larger one used to cost. It’s a good thing my husband is the only one that likes fruit cake!

When my daughter was done her shopping, we had one more stop to make: a nearby liquor store. The girls want to make boozy eggnog, and we’ve got everything but the booze to make it!

With all the errands done, we started heading home. My daughter updated her sister was we got closer. We were maybe 20 minutes away when I asked if my brother was still there, and we were told he was snow blowing! I thought he might do that. There was a lot of stuff in the way of his snow blowers, though, so I wasn’t sure. I know my brother well enough that he would take advantage of the trip to do as many things as he could, before he had to leave.

When we got to the gate, he was still at it, though I could see he was having issues with the snow blower.

My daughter opened the gate for me and I drove the truck up to the house for unloading. With both sun room doors tied closed, I had to go through the house to open them, so we could unload the outside cat kibble straight to the sun room. I also made sure to turn off both heat lamps, to let the ceramic bulbs cool down so I could switch them with the new bulbs.

It took them a while to cool down!

Everything was unloaded, the outside cats were fed and I parked the truck, and they were still too hot to remove. I didn’t want the isolation kitties without heat, though, so I found some thick work gloves and used those to remove the ceramic bulbs.

Here is the before and after, for the isolation shelter.

So they will now be lit up, as well as warmer!

Poor Eye Baby. He is not looking well at all. Kohl has been trying to get through the window while I pet her, not so much to escape as to get warm cuddles! Which I couldn’t do, since that would be taking her out of the shelter and into the wind.

The fluffy boy wouldn’t let me touch him. Eye baby just sat on the shelf, ignoring me.

Once that was done, I went out to see my brother. He had already put the snow blower away and was about to leave! He said he made a bit of a mess, though I didn’t see it as such. He told me the snow blower has transmission issues and it keeps stopping. There’s a trick to getting it moving again. Not something I’m going to touch! Perhaps we’ll eventually be using his snow blowers, too, but not until after he’s had a chance to show me how to run them, before or after he’s done the fixes they need. So far, little Spewie is enough to do the job we need.

My brother cleared a vehicle wide path to the barn, plus did a few passes in the inner yard, before I blocked the way with the truck to unload it. He also widened the driveway a bit, and even fiddled with the gate, as the two sides were no longer straight. When the ground shifts in the winter, the posts on either side move. When he redid how the gate was hinged to the posts after our vandal damaged the original hinges, he did it in such a way that they can be micro adjusted. He even used a level to make sure the two sides were exactly straight!

That was so sweet of him!

It’ll probably shift back again in the summer, though. 😁 No matter! If it does, they can be adjusted again.

I basically had time for him to update me on the stuff he did, and give him a hug, before he was gone. He needed to hurry if he was going to get home before we lost our light.

After closing up the gate behind him, I came back to the house and could see the isolation kitties by the light of the new heat lamps. I definitely got the impression they are feeling the difference!

I then remembered to give them their new toys. I imagine it would get pretty boring in there for such young kittens. At least when they’re warm enough to play, instead of huddling together for warmth!

I went through the sun room to tie off the doors again, and found several cats under the new heat bulb in there, too! I tried to make sure there were some smaller kibble bowls under the heat lamp. There were three cats around one small bowl under the lamp, instead of at the big tray of food, nearby! 😁

In retrospect, I do regret not getting 250 watt bulbs, right from the start.

Ah, well. Live and learn.

All in all, it turned out to be a productive, if more expensive than planned, day.

It was stuff we needed, though, so it is what it is. 🫤

As I close this off, I checked the weather again. We’re at -7C/19F again, but this time, the wind chill is listed as -22C/-8F. THAT is more like how it felt, this morning!

We’ve got a couple of days with expected highs of -2C/28F coming up before things start getting chilly again. The day after tomorrow, we’re supposed to get more snow. We shall see how that works out in our area. Long range forecast now says the above freezing temperatures will start after Christmas, instead of before Christmas, though Christmas day itself is supposed to be just below freezing. We’ll see how it turns out.

This year, we’ll be having a very quite Christmas and New Year. None of us have the spoons for much activity, this year.

It’s been an oddly difficult year.

Ah, well. It is what it is. We work with what we are given!

As my late father would days, “what else can you do?”

The Re-Farmer

What a gorgeous day!

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As I write this, with less than an hour to sunset, we are at 3C/37F. I was just outside, getting a few more things done, with no coat on, and it was awesome! The only down side is that, with everything melting, some things were a bit slippery.

I will get to that part in a bit!

My SIL had let me know last night that she and my brother would be coming out this morning to park their truck here for the winter. They expected to be here around 8:30 am, so at 7:30 or so, I headed out to feed the outside cats and do the morning rounds, and open the gate for them.

When I came outside with the cat food, there was a set of headlights at the gate!

By the time I put kibble out in all the food bowls, including the isolation shelter, and added some warm water, they were in the yard and my brother was parking the truck. He got a solar trickle charger for the battery, so he wanted to make sure the windshield would get the most light for as long as possible.

So I went to my SIL, who had followed in their car, and we had a nice visit. A rather longer visit than expected, as my brother kept finding one more thing he wanted to do before they left.

As I was walking to their car, though, I saw that my SIL had started it again, and moved it a few feet. An odd thing, since she wasn’t in the way of anything, and they weren’t leaving yet.

It turned out that our vandal had showed up, driving every so slowly as he passed the open gate at our driveway, trying to see what was going on! They’d been there less than 5 minutes! How did he know they were here? He lives nearby, but not THAT nearby!

As we chatted, with me standing in the open door of the car, we saw him again, coming back the other way. We knew he was coming before we could identify the vehicle, because we could see headlights through the trees, slowing down as they got closer to the driveway. By the time we could fully see his vehicle, he was driving at a crawl. I just stood there and openly watched him. I don’t know that he recognizes either of my brother’s cars, since both had to be replaced in the years since we moved here and he lost his mind. With the trail cams set up, he’s been behaving, but in the last little while, I’ve been seeing him more often. All of the activity that’s been going on in the past couple of months, from stuff being moved here to the excavation and repair of the expeller, must be driving him nuts.

When I had the chance, I called my mother to warn her, he might show up out of the blue again. She’s sick with a cold right now, so after telling him what’s going on here is none of his business, she can also tell him to go away because she’s sick.

Anyhow.

I had a good long visit with my SIL before they were finally ready to leave. I had to switch out the trail cam cards, so I went ahead of them to close and lock the gate behind them. On changing the card, though, I found that the new batteries we’d put in were at 2%!

So, after finishing the rest of my morning rounds, which included giving the isolation babies a can of wet cat food and getting more warm water to top up all the water bowls, I grabbed some fresh batteries and headed back to the camera.

I figured I could change the batteries there, since it wasn’t so cold that I needed to come inside while I was doing it. This camera has a battery case that pops out, but in order to do that, the camera has to be removed from its holder. I did that, took out the case, then set the camera on top of its post so I could have two hands to change the batteries out.

*sigh*

It fell into the snow, opening as it fell, and landed right on its innards. Even the memory card sprang out into the snow when it landed. When I picked it up, there was sticky snow all over the inside – some even got into the space the battery case goes into!

*sigh*

So I took that in and set it up where it could melt and drain. I had to quickly do something else, and my daughter was sweet enough to change out the batteries for me. After trying the whole thing off with paper towel as best I could, I left it while I had my breakfast.

When that was done, I put everything back together and tested it out. With no power for so long, the date and time had reset to default – 2022! – so I hit the menu button to reset it.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. And again. And again.

The menu would simply not come up. It was in set up mode, and I could see it was functioning. The screen was working find, and I could even see the seconds on the time changing. I just couldn’t do anything with it.

So I took the battery case out again and left it to dry longer, then headed back outside to get some things done.

The first was to fix the wind damage on the catio.

The first image in the slideshow above shows how it looked before I started. The vinyl tore at the cord that is wrapped around the whole thing, but that cord is also what kept it from getting blown off even more. In the second photo, you can see where, even in the back, the vinyl was torn loose from the push pins holding it in place.

I picked up some foam mounting tape, with double sided adhesive, to help with the repairs, and also had some clear Gorilla tape, to tape the torn section together. I removed a number of push pins, first, then added the mounting tape to strategic sections of the frame. The mounting tape won’t stick to the wood very well – especially when it gets colder – but the vinyl will stick to it. This way, when the push pins are added back, they vinyl shouldn’t tear away anymore, and it will still be easy to remove in the spring.

In the third picture, you can see where the mounting tape was used in the front and on the door, but I also included it at the back, where the sheet was torn loose from the pins.

Once the vinyl was being held in place by the mounting tape, I got out one of the dollar store dining table protectors I’ve been using for this and set it up right on top, starting at the door, pinning it along the top. It was long enough to just reach around the corner at the back, so that edge got taped to the old sheet. Once that was taped, the push pins were added back, then the excess vinyl on the bottom was tucked under the bottom of the catio. Then the cord was wrapped back around and tied off again.

I had to kick away the snow that was added along the bottom of the shelter, so the last thing to do was get a snow shovel and put that back. The door, one corner and one end now have a double layer of vinyl.

The cats were really, really liking it.

I took some video after I was done, starting from the back of the catio.

Stinky REALLY enjoyed being in there! The vinyl creates a pretty decent greenhouse effect inside, so it’s pretty warm in there, too. At least during the day.

The next thing to do was patch up some tears in the isolation shelter, from the cats trying to get in.

Before I started, I took advantage of the fact that there is now an insulation ceiling and lifted the roof to drain off the melting snow and slush. With how uneven the patio blocks are, the slow slope of the roof is pretty flat, instead, so it doesn’t drain much at all, and I didn’t want to take a chance of any water getting inside. There is quite a bit of overlap in the roof panels, but until we can properly seal the edges in the spring, water can still get in between and potentially cause problems.

Next, I cut away some of the more tattered pieces of vinyl and removed some of the pins. I then cut pieces out of another dollar store table protector to create the patches.

At one corner, I taped the patch in place, but ran out of tape, so I used the last of the foam mounting tape to hold the other patch in place. Then the pins were put back. There is still one tiny corner near the back that is torn, but I no longer had suitable tape to hold a patch in place.

I had to be really careful while doing this job, though. It was warm enough to melt the snow, but the patio blocks were cold enough that the water was trying to freeze again. Water on ice is not a safe combination!

The isolation babies were quite interested in what was going on. Especially Kohl.

I’m glad she’s warmed up to me again, because she wouldn’t let me touch her for the past couple of days!

Stinky really wanted to go inside and join them!

No luck touching the male, but he did sniff at my fingers!

Not that Kohl would let him get close to my hand. She really, really wanted attention!

That done, I decided to take out the cat bed in the lower level, since I’d seen Kohl had used it as a litter box, yesterday.

It looked like they used it as a litter box for the rest of the night, too!

I got it out and cleaned it off in the snow as best I could and set it aside. Then I changed the litter box by grabbing another one, getting it ready with pellets, then simply switching them out. The lest time the ramp door was open, the less chance the isolations babies could escape!

The litter box was well used, too, so they probably didn’t start using the lower level cat bed until it got unpleasant to use the litter box.

With today being to warm, we’re taking advantage of it to do laundry. My daughter and I replaced the leaking hose extension on the washing machine, then set it out the storm door window. With the washer already set up for laundry, I grabbed the cat beds from the shelf shelter, too. These were the ones we took out of the cat house and weren’t sure if we were going to bother washing them. The cats are using them in the shelf shelter, though, so I figured I may as well do a load of just outside cat beds, once our own laundry was done. The shelf shelter beds are getting pretty tattered, but they’ll be nice and clean and fluffy again, soon.

As I was finishing up inside and getting ready to head it, I spotted this adorable one, on the isolation shelter roof.

Someone is happy the snow was cleared from the roof!

I thought this was Magda, but it wouldn’t let me come close, got scared and ran off. Magda is a mostly socialized cat that lets us pick her up and cuddle her. So now I’m not sure.

I did get another chance to pet Kohl, though, and this time she let me pick her up and check her incision. It is healing very nicely!

As I was finishing gathering the supplies to take them inside, I started hearing something that sounded off.

Like someone driving really, really slowly at our driveway. So I tossed everything into the house, then went to check.

This time, our vandal was driving his tractor. Once again, very slowly driving past our driveway, staring down our driveway the entire time. So I just stood there, in the open, watching him as he finally turned his tractor around and drove off. He had the snow blower attachment on his tractor which is rather odd, since we don’t have enough snow to use something like that right now.

I checked the trail cam again after that, and its still not working right, so I switched up trail cams to make sure the driveway is covered.

I also went looking through my Amazon shopping list, where I have several solar powered cameras with battery back ups saved. After looking through them again, I ended up ordering two of a cheaper one that had a higher rating, and lots of very positive reviews by Canadians. Including some mentioning how well the solar panel was able to keep it powered, even in winter.

No idea when we’ll get them, though, since the postal strike it still going.

By the time everything was done and I got the cat beds in the laundry, I really, really didn’t want to go anywhere. I was supposed to go to the dump, then the feed store, but when I checked their hours I discovered the feed store had already closed for the day. They close really early on Saturdays!

So… no feed store. We’re still good with kibble for the outside cats, so a few days wait should be fine.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a quiet, indoor day for us. We’ve got snowfall warnings for 10-20cm/4-8in of snow, starting around noon and continuing through to Monday. It’s not a lot of snow, but I’d rather not drive in it if I don’t have to.

We’ve got a few milder days ahead of us, then a couple of colder one, before it starts getting mild again. We are no longer getting temperatures above freezing in the forecast for the week before Christmas, though, so who knows how things will change over the next few days.

For now, I’m just glad to have been able to take advantage of today’s lovely weather and get those outside jobs done!

Meanwhile… we have a fluffy kitten in the isolation shelter that needs a name.

Any suggestions?

The Re-Farmer

Clearing the lane

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Yes!

Finally!

I was able to get out with the chainsaw and work on that dead spruce tree.

It was still damp out, but more because it’s not warm enough for things to dry than because of any rain. We’re under a weather watch right now, as a large system is being blown almost straight North from the US, so the southern and eastern parts of our province are expected to get a storm. Locally, we’re expected to start getting rain at about 7am tomorrow morning. It’s then expected to continue to rain, off and on, through to the next morning, when it is supposed to become a mix of rain and snow.

Based on the current forecasts, today was pretty much my last day to get this done.

Here is my Instagram slideshow of how it went.

The first two pictures were taken before I got started. That’s basically how it has been since my daughter was last able to work on trimming away branches.

Which was the first part of what I had to do. I had my baby chainsaw (electric pruner) for most of that job. This part took the longest, because I took the time to break down the branches to fit into the wagon, then dumped them on the big branch pile in the outer yard. A lot of these were branches from the diseased crab apple tree, so they need to be burned. Previously, we were able to get the branch pile chipped, but this year we’ve been piling up diseased branches as well as things like squash plants that had powdery mildew on them.

While cleaning up the branches, I found the remains of an old bird’s nest.

When I finally got things clear enough to start using the chain saw on the crab apple tree, Syndol decided that would be a good time to climb the tree! I even cut away a broken section while he was up there, hoping the noise would have him jump down, but nope! In the end, I dumped another load of branches and came back before he finally made his way down.

Then it was more cutting and clearing and cutting and clearing. Crab apple tree branches are so bent and twisted, they took a remarkably long time to deal with. The wood is so much heavier, too. The difference is quite noticeable when I had pieces of apple tree cut quite short to load into the wagon and haul away, then tossing them on top of the pile, then started working on the spruce tree. I cut sections that were much longer than the apple tree trunk pieces, and the spruce tree’s trunk was at least twice as think at the top section of the tree, yet were so much lighter!

In the end, I had to stop because it was getting too dark. I left a section of the crab apple trunk alone, so that we could easily see it when we can finish cleaning it up later – likely in the spring. I was able to load three sections of the spruce tree’s trunk into the wagon to haul away (my apologies for the very fuzzy picture!) – that will NOT be going onto the burn pile, but will be stacked near the old garden shed – while a couple of larger pieces were left for later. The main thing is that there is now a cleared land that we can walk through – or drive through, if necessary.

Once the cut pieces of trunk are cleared away, the rest of the tree can be left for the spring. It’s going to take a lot more effort to clear that out, since it is in between other trees and in underbrush in the spruce grove.

In the end, I messaged a daughter to come out and help me put things away, because I was losing the light so fast, so the remaining logs have been left where they are until tomorrow. Hopefully, it won’t be raining too hard, and we can haul them away and stack them. We may be able to use these pieces for when we make a new garden shed as our cordwood practice building. We’ll need a lot more, but the walls for the practice building will probably be only about 8 inches wide, instead of the 12 – 16 inches more typical of cordwood building. I still want to use the method for when we build an outdoor bathroom (NOT an outhouse over a pit), but we need to clear some very large dead trees before we can work in the area I want to build it in.

We still have lots to do to collect and prepare before we can start building, but these logs could at least be a start, if the wood is in good enough condition.

All in good time.

For now, I’m just glad I was able to get that tree cleaned up and cut up enough to get that lane open again.

Little by little, things are getting done!

The Re-Farmer