My mother and I ended up in the ER for just under 6 hours.
She got her scan done – it turned out to be another ultrasound – and we were sent back to the ER waiting room until the results came in.
The problem is, for people waiting for scan results (we weren’t the only ones), they get squeezed in between patients with more urgent needs. Plus, only a doctor can discuss the results, not the nurses, and they were really busy. All 14 ER beds were full.
So what I thought might take a couple of hours, ended up much longer!
On the plus side, the cafeteria was open, so my mother did actually get a chance to eat. It was closed when she was there with my brother, yesterday. It was a real demonstration about just how hungry she was when she agreed to have a quesadilla, the only hot food option available. She had to ask what it was and agreed to have one. My mother will normally flat out refuse to try anything new, so this was a big deal!
I also almost drained the battery on my phone, distracting her with things on Pinterest. We tried watching a few short videos, but that was pushing her attention span to the limit, so I went back to Pinterest.
End result, when they finally called her in?
Nothing.
They found nothing wrong in their scan.
Now, with her symptoms, there is obviously something wrong, but they have no idea what. They took a sample for a culture test, which takes 5 days, so see if there’s a bacterial cause. They will phone my mother only if they find something wrong. Meanwhile, all the data will be sent to her doctor, and I will be booking an appointment for her in the near future – but not too near. We’ll see how it works out, with the Christmas holidays.
As for my mother, it seems she’s ridiculously healthy. Not bad for someone who is 92, very round, with busted up knees, and constantly complaining to us about various health problems, and is convinced the doctors are hiding things from her, like that she has cancer or something (she doesn’t). At one point, as my mother was being taken to an examination room, even the nurse that was supposed to be leading the way, only to have my mother race off ahead of her, commented on just how fast she is!
Anyhow.
Once she sees her regular doctor, she might get referred to a specialist to try and figure out what the heck is going on.
Funny how my mother complains about her health so much, but she’s had these symptoms for months and ever thought much of them. She figured they’d go away on their own.
*sigh*
Meanwhile, tomorrow we have to go to yet another town for my eye appointment, which means I won’t have the time I need to finish any of my 2023 garden analysis drafts. It might be a couple of days before I can get back to those.
This has got to be the busiest December for outings we’ve had since moving out here!
I actually took this photo yesterday. I haven’t taken any today.
This morning started out pretty normal. There were just a couple of things that had me wondering, as I did my morning rounds. For example, some of the slug trap jars were out of place, by quite a bit. I checked every squash plant for slugs (found only one!), and there were three of the jars knocked off the mulch and into the paths.
Later, while passing through the maple grove, I went to check on the pipe from the tap. I’m thinking we might be able to just patch the hole, rather than dig up the entire line. The bamboo stake I used to mark the location of the pipe and hole was snapped off at ground level.
It wasn’t until I was taking some fallen branches to the pile near the fire pit that I discovered the cause.
There was a cow on the wrong side of the outer yard fence! The entire herd was there, but one was most definitely not on the side was was supposed to be.
I sent a message to the renters to let them know, then closed off the gates to the inner yard. When I came back with a bucket to fill with water for the cow, as there is no open water source in the outer yard, I spotted a couple more cows – and possibly some calves, mostly hidden by the tall grass! A trail of cow patties by the fire pit gate, leading towards the yard, confirmed that at least a couple of cows had gone into the inner yard during the night. Thank goodness, they didn’t eat anything in the garden!
I sent an update to the renter and she said she would be there soon. I was quite relieved that she even looked at my messages, since we are connected through Facebook Messenger, but haven’t use it since before my account got stolen. I wasn’t sure if she knew I’d recovered it or not.
Next, I went to check the “gate” by the barn, where the cows often sometimes get through. The chain across it was still there, but one of the poles supporting the electric fence was down, and the wire was clearly broken somewhere, and was lying on the ground for as far as I could see.
I popped inside for a while and had a quick breakfast. When I could hear cows suddenly mooing, I headed outside again. The renter had come over in their utility vehicle – with her littlest one along for the ride! – and was by the gate in the fence leading towards the gravel pit. It’s a barbed wire gate, and a pain to open, but she had it down by the time I was crossing the outer yard in that area. At that point, I could see there were quite a few cows on the wrong side of the fence, and they were very curious about what was going on. I went around in one direction, so they’d move towards the opening, while she went around the other way. Unfortunately, one of the cows panicked, and that set them all off. The herd outside the fence stampeded off towards the gravel pit, and the ones inside the fence began panicking even more, trying to find their way through. A couple of cows found and went through the open gate, but at least one cow and a couple of calves barreled their way through the barbed wire fence. Then one last cow went and ran in the opposite direction. We got her going back again, but she wouldn’t go for the open gate. She eventually went through an opening in another part of the fence, which normally has the electric wire across it.
We got the gate closed again, but a couple of lines of barbed wire were loose. She brought out a fence tightener she’d grabbed on her way out, but it turned out to be broken. Her husband usually does this stuff, but there was some sort of accident involving a fence on another section of property he was dealing with, and he probably had the working tightener.
Thankfully, we have some. I’ve found at least 3 of them, and 2 of them were in the garage, so I went and got them. The first one we tried worked, and now I know how those things are used! It was the first time I’d seen one in action.
Once that was done, I went to put the tighteners away while she checked the fence line, so see how many fence posts would need to have the barbed wire re-stapled to them, and the status of the electric fence wire.
We continued to check the fence from both sides, though there were some sections I couldn’t get at, as it’s so overgrown. I even commented about how I don’t mind the cows getting through, because they can eat the overgrown grass we can’t mow, and how I wouldn’t mind borrowing a couple of cows for that. I’d said that to her husband, when he was her last, and they actually wouldn’t mind that, except that we have no way of knowing what might be buried in there that a cow might eat or hurt themselves on. Which is completely understandable!
While I was working my way around piles of stuff on our side of the fence, the renter found a broken end of electric fence wire, but there was no side of the other end.
The section of fence that is open is by the septic outflow pipe, which is on the outside of the fence line, near a collapse log building on the inside of the fence line. There used to be fences around the entire area where the outflow pipe and a low section it drains into is, but those fences have fallen down long, long ago. The only think keeping the cows out there is the electric fence. That’s where we found where they got in; the tall grass was all tramples and the electric fence wire had been dragged far into the outer yard. There wasn’t enough slack for her to connect them again, so she was going to have to get more tools and supplies.
I went inside and intended to go back out again to help later on, along with doing a number of other outdoor tasks on my list, now that we’re having such gorgeous weather right now. Unfortunately, that plan went out the window, when I was suddenly hit with a bout of severe intestinal discomfort. For several long, uncomfortable hours, I didn’t dare stray far from the washroom. As if that weren’t bad enough, my husband was hit with the same problem, at the same time! We have no idea why, but we were both fighting for the bathroom, and even our daughter’s had to get rushed out a couple of times. I didn’t even dare drive the 3 miles to the post office to pick up a parcel, and had to get my daughter to do it for me.
We seriously need a second bathroom. Yeah, we have the outhouse, but it’s too far from the house for times such as these! Thankfully, whatever it was, seems to have passed and I’m almost feeling stable again.
So plans for today have been thrown completely out the window. Thankfully, I’m feeling stable again – at least enough to do my evening rounds! I was even able to head out and harvest some more mint for my daughter. She decided to use the mint harvested earlier to make a simple syrup, but the longer she cooked it down, the less it tasted like mint, and the more it tasted like sugar. Once the syrup is strained and cooled, she plans to use it to make mint flavoured panna cotta. I’m quite looking forward to it!
Plus, mint will be good for my digestive tract. I just wish I knew why it went crazy in the first place, so I can make sure to avoid it in the future!
Thank goodness, the weather is supposed to stay good for the next week or more!
I had another rough morning today. Along with pain and stiff joints, I had almost no balance, bouncing off the walls going to and from the bathroom, so I asked my daughters to feed the outside cats for me again.
Since Easter, when I was no longer on my Lenten fast from sugar and starchy foods, I have still not been eating a lot of either. I might include a potato with my breakfast, or some rice with my supper, and even had a couple of cookies my daughter recently bakes. That’s about it. I think, however, I am going to have to go back. I was mostly pain free during my fast, and certain other… bodily functions, shall we say… had improved. I even had days where I didn’t take any painkillers at all. Granted, some of the pain issues I’m having now may be related to how the temperature fluctuations affect my osteoarthritis, but that can only explain so much. Fatigue is another issue.
A lot of this stuff was so constant, I didn’t even really notice them until they came back after I ended my fast. So it looks like I’m going to need to cut out the sugar and starches, if I want to accomplish the things I need to get done this year. When I finally headed outside, it was because I made myself go. I sure as heck didn’t feel up to it. But, today is working out to be another gorgeous and sunny day, and I had things I wanted to check on.
The first thing I heard when I got outside was a very familiar crunching noise, so I checked the kibble house.
No wonder I was seeing cats cautiously circling around their shelters! Stinky Kitty was moved right in!
This little bugger did not want to leave, either. It’s still too cold to set up the hoses, so I tried to convince it to leave with a long stick. The little bugger just sniffed the end of the stick and kept on eating. He (she?) finally left after I went around the kibble house, banging on the roof and kicking at the back wall.
After that, I did the rest of my rounds. Once more of the snow is gone and the ground it less muddy, we’re going to have to take the wagon or wheel barrow around to pick up all the little branches and garbage that have been blown around. There are a few more garden beds that can be worked on, but I’m physically just not up to it. I kept seeing stuff that I want to get working on, some of which I can start now, but the old bod just can’t handle it today. Which is really, really frustrating. This is stuff that needs to get done, whether I feel like it or not. Especially since the weather forecasts – but just on one of my weather apps – is saying we might get 2-3 cm (about an inch) of snow starting tomorrow, and continuing over the next couple of days. Other apps say it’ll be rain. Either way, not good conditions for the outside work I want to do.
Which I will get into more in a video tour I made yesterday. Unfortunately, every time I try to save the file in a format I can upload, the video gets corrupted. I’m sure the problem is my computer, though, not the software. I’m going to try again today and, if it finally works, I’ll upload and post it.
Then, I’m going to take a nap before I plan to go into town to meet the egg lady for a couple more flats of farm fresh eggs!
Today is Sunday and I normally try to keep it as my day of rest, but today just feels… wasted.
I woke up to a bad pain day. Enough that I asked my daughters to take care of feeding the outside cats, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. It’s not even the worst pain I’ve been in, but it’s like all my joints just don’t want to work properly.
(As I type, retype and retype again, these few sentences repeatedly, because my fingers don’t want to work right!)
Still, I wanted to make sure I got outside for a while, do the rest of my morning rounds and get some fresh air and sunshine. It’s a really gorgeous day out there, and I didn’t want to miss too much of it!
Judgement is judging the state of my boots. 😄
Judgement and Gooby both followed me around all over. With more snow melting away, and plenty of wind, I found and picked up a lot more of those plastic strips from the new shingles being blown around.
One of the areas I can now get into is parts of the spruce grove. Usually it’s either too wet from the snow melt, or too overgrown, to get into. The snowmelt is being absorbed by the ground this spring and nothing is growing yet, so I was able to get through most of the area. There are so many dead trees in there. Some on the ground and rotting, some stuck on other trees and may actually be useable, and others that will need to be cut down. I was also spotting the poplars I want to thin out to use for the trellis tunnels we will be building. Poplar has been taking over the spruce grove. We will be keeping them to a certain extent, as they have been a very useful material, but as we cut down and clean out the dead trees, I want to plant more spruces in the spruce grove!
Feeling the way I do today, though, looking at all the work that needs to be done had me feeling my aching bones even more.
I was also scoping out locations. If things work out to plan, we’re going to have a shed delivered to us at some point, and we need to decide where to put it. It will likely be used as a chicken coop, once it gets the repairs it needs, until we can build the mobile chicken coop I have in mind. We will need some sort of base to support it, so it’s not directly on the ground. Yesterday, I was able to get into the barn and see the state of things. In the lean to side, there are a whole lot of old tires (why are there so many old tires all over the place???), some with rims, some without. It occurred to me that we can use the tires with rims to support the shed. Or just the rims. We don’t have as many rims without tires around, but we can take the tires off.
I had considered putting the shed near the barn, where we would have access to electricity if we wanted, but we have other plans for the outer yard, including permanent raised garden beds and the outdoor kitchen, so I’m thinking it might get to be too much. My daughter is also looking to build a shelter for a forge in the outer yard, though in a different area. The space is going to be filled up quite a bit, and we still need to make sure that there are lanes to drive through with large vehicles. There are also pipes from the well and septic tank running through towards the barn, with the septic pipe running off to the outflow pipe and water pipes running to an old cattle fountain and the barn. The area over them needs to be kept clear, in case they ever need to be excavated. Some day, I would like to be able to turn that water on again, but not until we’ve been able to replace our well pump and upgrade to a larger pressure tank. The shut off valve for fountains and barn is in our basement. There are two cattle fountains are designed to refill automatically, and they keep the water from freezing in the winter. One fountain, we can see from the house. The other is behind the barn, set up to be accessible both inside and outside of a pen. I’d like to have both of them checked out and repaired as necessary. We’re not planning to have cattle, but if we end up having goats or something, or even have it available for the deer or the renter’s cows, that would be good. That is years in the future, though. As for the tap in the barn, it’s been bashed into at some point and needs repair, too.
In the end, I decided the best place to set up the shed would be near the garage. There’s an open space there that no longer has a branch pile in it. We would have to line it up with the front of the garage, which should keep it from shading out the asparagus and sunchoke beds along the chain link fence. With the chain link fence and the garage, we would have to fence off only two sides to create a run for any chickens. It would be a small run for just a few chickens, but enough to start with. The shed would need to be far enough from the garage to access the wall and roof. Now that the branch pile is gone, we can finally clean out the eaves on that side of the garage!
That branch pile was never meant to be there for several years!!
Having it by the garage gives easy access to electricity, plus better storage for feed and bedding, and still be fairly close to the house, where we’d be getting water from.
To prepare for the shed here, the ground will need a small amount of leveling, and the tires/rims can be brought over. I don’t know the dimensions of the shed yet, so I’d just want to have them nearby until I know where to put them. We even have a chain link gate in the storage house, sitting on the remaining section of stairs to the basement, that could be used to access the chicken run after we fence it off. The shed itself needs its floor replaced. It has a flat roof that leaks, which is why the floor got damaged, so I want to put an angle roof over the existing one, with an overhang on all sides.
Little by little, it’ll get done.
The next area I wanted to scope out was the maple grove behind the house. The two branch piles there are now gone, so it’s nice and open again. The old garden shed is slowly rotting away. My late brother got it second hand from who knows where, and it was basically shoved in between some trees, on top of rocks. I don’t know if any attempt had been made to level it when it was first brought in, but it’s certainly not level now. The trees are holding it up, though!
Since the outdoor bathroom we were planning to build as a cordwood practise building will have to wait until we’ve cut down and removed about a dozen dead spruce trees, I want to make a garden shed as a cordwood practise building. My original thought was to place it next to where there is a path through the maple grove to the main garden area, with the door facing the path.
The bare ground the branch piles had been on will be planted with a lawn replacement mix of seeds, but as I walked around, I considered using one of those patches as a better location for the shed I have in mind. It’s not going to be very big; the interior is planned to be 6’x8′, plus the width of the cordwood walls, so we have some options. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the water. There is a tap near the old garden area. It used to be right at the path along one side of the garden, but the garden grew smaller over the years, as my parents planted more trees closer to the house, instead of along the north fence line. There are now trees on the other side of the old path, where garden used to be. A lot of trees have been cut down since it was installed, and there’s even a stump right at the tap that still keeps sending out shoots. Other trees have gotten much bigger since it was installed, too. The water source is a tap at the back of the house, and there is a hose buried in the ground. I’ve tried hooking up the hose end, only to have water spraying up from the ground, at the edge of one of the branch piles that was there. One of the goals of this year is to dig up the old hose and replace it. My thought is to get some heavy duty hose and run it through a PVC pipe from tap to tap. That way, if we ever need to replace it again, it would be relatively easy to pull it out and put a new one in, without having to dig a new trench.
Digging that old hose out is not going to be easy. There are going to be a lot of roots in the way!
The main goal being to have that tap at the main garden area working again. It would be a better place to hook up a hose for watering the garden, and I want to make a vegetable washing station. Having the new garden shed near the tap would also be convenient.
The more I walked around the area, the more I realized the best place to build the garden shed would actually be on the other side of where the hose is buried, closer to where the current shed is, and closer to the tap. There are fewer tree stumps to work around, among other things! There would also be more open space in what would be the front of the shed.
In planning the cordwood walls for this, we intend to place longer logs in parts of the wall to support a bench on the outside at one end, which would be closer to the tap. We could even include some longer logs higher up to support a small table or shelf, too. The other end will be facing south, and we plan to have a window and bottle bricks on that side for natural light. With the new location I’m considering, there won’t be as much light, since there are more large maples there. At least one of them is dead and needs to be cut down and untangled from the live tree that’s holding it up. Others are leaning so far over, I plan to cut them to where the trunks are still straight, which will encourage new growth at a lower height. That will be better for the trees, but will eventually block out more light from the planned shed. I don’t mind that too much, though. As long as we have a good, strong garden shed!
So…
Lots of plans. Lots of work to do this summer.
I guess today wasn’t that much of a wasted day, after all.
Because I completely forgot I hadn’t made a post today!
I counted “only” nineteen outside, this morning.
It’s been an almost disorienting day today. The pain in my neck/shoulder area is actually making me feel kinda nauseous and a little bit dizzy. I wasn’t up to doing the third batch of lard. It can wait another day, in its semi-frozen state. Not much productivity for me today at all, and the day seemed to be gone before I knew it.
This morning, we had a combination of light snow and more fog.
Only now, in the late afternoon, do we finally have sunshine.
We still haven’t received a call about financing the replacement vehicle. By now, I figure there just isn’t a lender that will accept our application. I’m sure our credit score is pretty low. After my husband went on disability and we lost 40% of our income, we had to go under a consumer proposal to finish paying things off. That was ended a few years ago, but we have no credit cards, no mortgage and no other loans. Basically, no debt. Which means, nothing to improve our credit score. Rather ironic, isn’t it? We have no debt, therefore we have a bad credit score.
With waiting on the financing, I’ve been delaying our stock up shopping trip. We’re still good for most things, but I didn’t want it wait too much longer, or we’d start running out of things. Mostly cat food, since that’s the one thing we haven’t been able to stock up on. Since the van is still prepped for trade in, including the summer tires in the back, that meant using my mother’s car. Which can’t hold as much, even with the back seats folded down, but it’ll do.
Once on the road, the further south I went, the thicker the fog and blowing snow. I was intending to go to Costco, but by the time I reached the town my mother lives in, I changed my mind. The highways were fine – and the surrounding fields and trees were stunningly beautiful! However, I knew the city would be a mess. So I decided to go to the nearer city and hit a Walmart. It meant a smaller shop, but I could at least get the most necessary items.
I almost didn’t!
This is $261.11, after taxes.
Lately, I’ve been buying 10kg bags of kibble (about 22 pounds). The shelves with large bags of kibble were almost empty, and I had to get the 7kg (about 15 pounds) of economy kibble, instead. Four of those for the outside cats, and more wet cat food for the inside cats, and we were already at about $110.
I got a container of black peppercorns, but they didn’t have the ground thyme and sage I was looking for, in stock. I had intended to buy more protein items, but ended up with just three different cheeses (of the 2 for $10 varieties), some pork chops, and some seafood for the girls. They also requested hot dog fixings, so I got a bulk package of wieners and some hot dog buns, as well as wraps. I got a box of granola bars and Kraft Dinner for them, too. That meant more milk for making the KD. The olives are more of a snack food for my husband, though I like to nibble on a bowl of olives, too. One of my favourite treats used to be a certain brand of sundried black olives, packed in salt, but I haven’t seen them since we moved, so… green olives it is. 😄 There’s paper towels and facial tissues, coffee creamer for the girls (my husband and I don’t drink coffee), and two boxes of Earl Grey Double Bergamot tea. It’s often out of stock, so I was happy to see it. Especially since the tea shelves were pretty empty, too!
Aside from getting this as Walmart, I was also able to swing by a Staples and get some ink for my printer. For some reason, I’m out of cyan again – why that one colour keeps running out, I have no idea. We don’t use our printer much. If the printer is out one colour, it won’t let me print anymore. Not even black and white. Frustrating! While there, I picked up some tax preparation software. NOT TurboTax this year. Hopefully, something that isn’t so frikkin’ counter intuitive. So that was another $55 and change in total gone.
The price of printer ink went up since I last bought some. The economy kibble prices also finally went up. I got excellent prices on some other things, though, so that sort of made up for it.
The unfortunate thing is, I’m going to need to do this again, soon. That kibble won’t last until the end of the month, though as things warm up, the outside cats aren’t needing to eat as much. We also need to get more stove pellets for the litter pretty soon, and that’s a Canadian Tire trip. If I’m getting both, I’d be taking the tires out of the back of the van and using that, rather than my mother’s car.
Another ironic thing, considering our major gardening plans. What I’d wanted to do, and will have to do when I finally make it to Costco, is stock up on quality proteins. We still have lots of our quarter beef in the freezer, but I don’t want to go through that too quickly.
I’ve mentioned more than a few times, that all four of us have various health issues. After much research and assessing of things, my husband and I want to try going carnivore. We’re not going to go cold turkey on it, but the more I look into it, the more convinced I am that our entire family would see significant improvement in all our different issues, by cutting out virtually all carbs. For my daughters, I especially think they need to cut out almost all vegetables. All plants have pesticides in them. It’s their natural defence, since they can’t up and run away from the animals and insects that want to eat them. Some people are sensitive to them than others. Ruminants are the best meat for a low carb diet, as they have digestive systems that ferment plant material, thereby removing those toxins and converting material indigestible to humans into high quality meat. Personally I don’t think I am sensitive to these plant toxins, and could probably do well on keto, but it seems the rest of my family is. My daughters, unfortunately, have been cutting meat out of their diet more and more – probably because of the cost, though one of them says certain meats make her feel sick. That this includes some cuts but not others, of the same kind of meat, leaves me thinking there is something else going on. Anyhow, what my husband in particular really should be doing is going completely carnivore, then slowly adding things back, as a sort of elimination diet. It won’t heal his back (which includes birth defects that were not discovered until after his back injury), but it should at least get him off a lot of medications. I’m hoping that, once they see positive results in us, my daughters will be more willing to go it, too.
Yet another reason why I want to include animals as part of our self sufficiency goals, and part of that includes growing their feed, because the cost of feed is getting pretty steep. If that means growing a garden full of animal food, then eating the animals, I’m good with that. But we have lots of preparation before we can start doing that. First, a chicken coop. Possibly some meat rabbits next. Then set up for a couple of pigs. For pigs, we would get piglets in the spring to be butchered in the fall, so we won’t be overwintering pigs, like we would with chickens. Pigs are social animals, so we’d get at least two. We might get milk goats at some point, but will likely keep buying our beef from the same ranch we’re getting it from now. I just don’t see us reaching a point where we will have our own cows – though we might get alpacas at some point. My daughter wants fibre animals.
Okay, so I’m getting off track here. 😄
Back to other updates.
I’ve been messaging with the Cat Lady. Her surgery was cancelled at the last minute. The new specialist wants to put her on medications, first. It’s so frustrating, but he’s convinced that if they do the surgery now, she’ll end up back within the year. She’s planning on going to the US for a second opinion and possible surgery in the spring. So frustrating! Months of tests and preparation, actually in the hospital and ready to go under the knife, only to have the whole thing turned upside down by someone she’d only seen for 15 minutes. The other specialist thought surgery was the best option. The health care system in this province really sucks. It’s not even the worst province in Canada for that, either, which is downright scary.
All that going on, and she’s worried about how Tissue is doing, too! I assured her that Tissue is doing fine. As I write this, she is burrowed under my sheets, sleeping. A few more days on soft food and medication, and we should be able to let her out of the isolation room again. 😄
On top of all that, I got a call from my mother. Her timing was perfect, as I’d just gotten home. The girls were still putting away the groceries!
I’m heading out again, to help her do her own grocery shopping trip. Then I have to head to another town to pick up a Purolator package. I thought they now had a depot in the general store our post office is in – I’ve picked up a Purolator package there not long ago! But apparently, no. Weird.
I’d love to finally get a call back from the finance lady. Even if it’s just to tell me that no, we can’t get financing. That’s better than hanging in limbo like this! But she’s working really hard to get us that vehicle! 😁 I do appreciate her efforts. But gosh, it’s taking a really long time!
We had to juggle a bit to be able to close the freezer lid. No, it’s not completely full of beef – there’s other stuff underneath – but I’d say over half the freezer is now packages of beef.
After I took the picture, I dug out a couple of packages of T-bone steaks to thaw out for today! It’s been soooo long since we’ve had a good steak!
I love how big the stew packages are this time. They’re not visible, but there’s also about two dozen 2 pound packages of ground beef in there.
Today’s plans, however, had already changed before I went to bed!
I got a call from my brother. He’d just talked to my mother, and he was asking if I could take her to the hospital today. !!! My mother thinks she’s got a UTI again (she is likely right), but she told my brother more than she told me, and it’s more of a problem than I knew. My guess is, she was hoping my brother would drop everything, drive all the way to her place, then take her to the hospital and sit with her, like he had done the last time this happened. She’s been suffering for more than a week, but had only just tried calling the community health number yesterday. She can’t handle the automated phone systems, so she just hit 0 and left a message. Twice. No response.
So today, my plan was to call our doctor’s clinic, which is in a town about 40-45 minutes drive from my place, as soon as it opened (after doing my rounds; head count of 27 this morning, and I couldn’t see the new bitty). I wanted to see if I could make arrangements with them, or see if I should take her to the hospital (our doctor’s clinic shares a building with the hospital).
Then I got a call from the home care worker that last assessed my mother. They got her messages from yesterday, and followed up. The person who normally answered the phone doesn’t work on Wednesdays. *sigh* My mother seemed confused about things, so he wanted to clear things up with me, but she had already told him about going to her doctor today.
One of the things my mother has been pushing to do is change doctors again. There aren’t full time doctors locally, which is why we now to go another town. Plus, the local doctor, who came in from the city once a week, was female, and my mother doesn’t like female doctors. Apparently, there is now a new doctor, though. He might even be there full time now, instead of coming in from the city. I’m not sure. Our doctor in the other town isn’t white, and my mother doesn’t like that about as much as she doesn’t like female doctors. Having a closer doctor would be better for her (but he’s Greek; not sure if that’s white enough for her), however there have been issues in the past with getting good care locally. The hospital just doesn’t have the resources. Whether she switches doctors or not, she won’t be happy. She’s convinced she has cancer or something, but the doctors are keeping it a secret from her.
Anyhow.
I called the clinic right after it opened, but the line was already busy, so I called my mom and told her what I was working on. She was already getting ready to leave! When I got through to the clinic, however, it turned out her doctor had an opening, so I was able to make an appointment for her this afternoon.
So I called my mother back and we worked out a plan. I’ll be heading over to her place early enough to have lunch (she requested Chinese food this time! 😁), and we wouldn’t be in any hurry about leaving. I will be using our van, as it’s better for winter road conditions, so we’ll have to remember to bring her little stool to help her get in and out.
Which means I’m going to be out for most of today.
Ah, well. At least it’s supposed to be a relatively mild day today. Things are supposed to get colder again tomorrow, and I’d rather not be driving my 91 yr old mother around in the cold! We still need to do at least one trip to the city for our monthly stocking up, but thanks to the trip I did manage to make – and the beef delivery! – plus our current state of supplies, there is no urgency on that.
I really like being well stocked. It takes a lot of pressure off. It wouldn’t be as big a deal if we were still living in the city, but it makes a huge difference living in the boonies, and winter is coming on!
In other things, I talked to the cat lady yesterday evening. She showed my pictures of the new bitty to a vet already. Given the size, they agree that it is younger than the other bitties. Once we are sure there are no siblings, she wants to take it in. Like the other cats, it probably already has upper respiratory issues, and being so young, they don’t expect it would survive the winter, either, even in the relative warmth and comfort of the heated cat shelter. The new bitty will join the other bitty. Things have changed there, too. He is not going to the lady that took the other two. Instead, he will be going to the cat lady’s cousin! He’ll be going to his new home after Christmas. Maybe, he’ll have a little orange buddy going with him? Wouldn’t that be cool! Also, she has managed to find homes for 6 cats she was fostering! She will have room for more, soon.
So we will continue to monitor and, if things go as I expect, we will have an orange bitty in the house tonight.
We shall see! It’s not like anything seems to be going to plan, today! 😄😄
I was feeling well enough to finally get our first stock up shop for December done. I am no longer sick, but still feeling pretty weak. Honestly, I would have stayed home if I could. I didn’t want to be driving in that wind, when the roads are in that “is that melted snow, or is that ice?” stage! I had intended to take my mother’s car, because it needs an oil change, but our van has winter tires, so I took that, instead.
Even so, I wasn’t sure how far I was up to driving. I reserved judgement until I reached my mother’s town. She has a cold now, too, and was complaining about coughing badly at night, so I went to her pharmacy and got some cold medication for her, then swung by to drop it off. By then, I knew I was up to making the rest of the drive.
My mother looked quite miserable, and had had another rough night of coughing. One of the medications I got for her was some NeoCitrin so, before I left, I got the kettle going, cut apart all the pairs of packets for her, because I knew it would be harder for her to do herself, then got a cup ready for her before I left. We also went over the directions for how much to take of the cough syrup I got for her, which would be best for her to take before bed, since that’s when her coughing is the worst. When she found out where I was going, she asked me to pick up some milk for her to drop off on the way home.
Once I was done at her place, I got some fuel (local prices are now 158.9/L) then headed to a small Walmart at the nearer city.
There were two things I especially needed to get, and those made up most of the bill. I got four 10kg bags of kibble for the outside cats, at just under $26 each (a really good price for our area) and a case of 32 cans of wet cat food for the inside cats (we still have dry kibble for them). The canned cat food is now $28.47, which is about $10 more expensive than just a few months ago. Altogether, this is about half the cat food we’ll need for the month. When we do our Costco trip, I’ll get more kibble (how many depends on what size bags they have available at the time), and a 48 pack of canned cat food.
Then I got some cold medication. There are shortages of cold medications across Canada right now, and there was less of it at the Walmart than in my mother’s pharmacy! Still, I was able to get both day and night time NeoCitrin (at my mother’s pharmacy, they only had the day type), and a big bottle of liquid cough medicine. I also picked up some vitamins my doctor has me on, and at checkout, I grabbed 4 different flavours of cough candy.
Since our quarter beef should be ready for pick up this week, the only meat I got was some chicken breasts and, because none of us are up to cooking very much right now, a big box of Pizza Pops. There’s some Havarti, mozzarella and marble cheese in there, coffee for my daughters, some clementines, a couple of loaves of rye bread, a 4L of milk for us and a 2L milk for my mother. I also remembered to grab some popcorn seasonings, in three flavours. Oh, and a box of Vanilla Rooibos tea.
I also picked up a couple of t-shirts for my husband. The cats climb him a lot, and all his t-shirts are getting filled with holes from their claws! I went looking in the craft section for little things I could use with the Christmas ornaments I’m making this year, but there was absolutely no Christmas themed or coloured crafts items available. None. It’s like Christmas doesn’t exist in the Walmart craft department. It’s been like that for a few years now, I’ve noticed. I used to work in a craft store. Christmas craft materials started showing up in July, at the latest, because of the time it takes to make things in time for Christmas. I did find some replacement blades for my Xacto knife, though. I have some, but just can’t find them right now. Then, while waiting in line, I went ahead and bought some caramel filled chocolates, as a van snack.
My husband had suggested I pick up some McRaunchies burgers as a treat for the sickies, so after I finished paying for my stuff, I ordered 4 double quarter pounders with cheese and bacon. That came out to almost $44, after taxes! You know it’s bad when McDick’s burgers are $10 each. Ah, well. Beggars can’t be choosers! The girls really appreciated the treat when I got home. Even a barely warm, kinda soggy from being in an insulated bag, treat.
So there we have it. Thirty four items, and almost $400 later!
Of course, I did stop at my mother’s on the way home to deliver her milk. What a difference! That one dose of cold medicine I’d made for her earlier, and she was feeling – and looking! – so much better! She was so very happy at how well it worked, and how quickly. I’m really glad I did that on the way out, rather than getting the medication for her at the same time as ours, as I’d originally intended. She was breathing clearly, feeling stronger, and was in much, much better spirits.
Amazing what a bit of the right medication can do!
Yesterday, the entire family spent as much time as possible in bed, getting plenty of rest and fluids to get over our colds. I’m happy to say we’re all improved quite a bit today. Yesterday, I had to get the girls to do the morning cat feeding, but today, I was able to do it myself again.
Look what I found!
So smol!!!
This is one of the kittens from what had been the youngest litter until the bitties showed up. We’ve had some progress socializing them, though it’s hard to tell at times. There are so many white and grey kittens from two litters – eight, altogether – and they run around so much, it’s hard to keep track of them. I think this is one that has allowed me to pick it up before, but I’m not sure!
This morning, I did a head count and reached 27. Then I counted again and counted 28. I get a different number, every time I try to count heads! 😄
Yesterday, we were predicted to hit 4C/40F, but ended up reaching at least 5C/41F. Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of 3C/37F. My husband’s disability payments come in on the last business day of the month (private insurance) and third last business day of the month (CPP Disability). However, then those days fall on a Monday, as the CPP Disability has this month, it actually shows up in our account on Saturday. So we got his payment today. Normally, I would take advantage of that, and the warm temperatures, and head into the city to do our first big stock up shop for the month. However, when I was cleaning out the ground floor litter boxes this morning (we were behind on that, with everyone being sick!), I actually broke into a sweat. So while I’m feeling a lot better today, I’m still weak as a kitten (a smol kitten!), and definitely not well enough to drive to the city. We’ll see how things are over the next couple of days. I hope I can make the trip tomorrow, because the forecast for the day after says to expect snow showers. I’d really prefer not to be driving on that. More because I don’t trust other drivers! 😁
So today is going to be another quiet day of focusing on recovery.
Posting might be light for the next while. Not only has my cold gotten worse, but now the whole family is getting sick!
It’s been so long since any of us have had colds, the only cold medication we have expired a year ago. I’m pretty sure I bought it more than 3 years ago!
The Re-Farmer 