Good news!

May 21, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Today has turned out to be a dreary day with rain on and off all night and continuing on through today.

Translation: I feel like I’m about to fall asleep at my keyboard right now.

The ground is way too saturated for the work I hoped to do outside today, but I can’t complain.

First good news.

I got Bug!

She had come into the sun room to eat kibble and was hungry enough that she didn’t run off when I came near. I grabbed the bowl of cat soup for the isolation cats and saw her still there, so I snuck a pet on her back.

She looked at me, then went back to eating.

I gave her neck scritches.

She kept eating.

So I picked her up.

She wasn’t too happy with that, but I had the bowl of warm cat soup, so I basically stuck it under her face and started walking. Every time she made like she was going to escape, I moved the food closer. She didn’t try to eat it while I held her, but it did seem to calm her down.

Once at the isolation shelter, she allowed me to put her in! I took out the food bowl inside and closed the window before she could make a run for it.

After taking out the leftover cat soup from last night, which the other cats pounce on immediately, I refilled it with fresh cat soup and set it back in.

Curtis was very interested in getting into the shelter and I ended up letting him in, too.

I did a quick check around the yard and, thinking of the raccoon I saw in the garden shed, decided to check and see if it was still there.

Yes, SHE was.

Turn your volume up a bit for this one.

There’s a litter of baby raccoons under that ball of fur. At the start of the video, you can hear the extra chittering from the babies.

Hmm… I just realized that Instagram shortened an 11 second video into something barely a second long – but I’m also getting “we are having trouble playing this video” messages. That’s on my desktop, though. On my phone, I can see the whole thing. Do let me know if you are getting the full 11 seconds, please!

I did move that garden feeder attachment aside after getting the video. I could just see part of her face after moving it, but she stayed all hunched around her babies.

I’m going to have to figure out how to get the stuff in the shed that I’ll need for the garden without scaring the heck out of them all. I don’t expect aggression from the mama, unless she feels threatened, which she might if I start moving out the bundles of garden stakes and plant supports. There’s that rolling seat/cart, but I won’t need it now that I’ve got my walker.

We’ve had cats have their litters in there, but this is a first for raccoons!

I paused to get a picture of the isolation kitties before I headed out this afternoon. Curtis is in the big cuddle puddle. Bug wants out again. 😄

Tonight, they have their overnight fast. In the morning, we have to get two into carriers. On file, we’re supposed to bring in Furriosa and Batman (aka: Marta), but they will take any two we can bring. I can see being able to get Bug. Furriosa… my daughter might be able to get her, but I’ve barely managed to sneak touches on her back. The other two, not even that, but we’ll have another week to work on them.

Once the outside cat stuff was done, it was time to head into town. My husband was finally up to getting his blood work done. That is always a challenge. They always have a hard time to get a vein on him – and they needed to take 8 vials! The tech barely got two done before she had to find another spot and was eventually able to fill the remaining vials.

That done and home again, I was going to grab an early lunch, then head over to visit my mother, since I wouldn’t be able to do it tomorrow.

Which is when I got a call from my brother.

It has finally happened.

He got a call from the nursing home. The one my mother actually wants to be in.

They have a bed for her – tomorrow!!!!

After well over two years – probably closer to three, by now! – of my mother fighting to get into a nursing home, it is finally going to happen! Yay!!!!

They wanted us to do the transport, which we thought the TCU would do. I wasn’t going to be home tomorrow, plus my mother can’t get into the truck. She can barely get into my brother’s car. So that was something that needed to be worked out.

Things were still very much in the air, except for what her room number will be, and “check in” time. She will have a room to herself, too.

I told my brother I was planning to visit after I finished my lunch, and he said he would phone Mom right away, since he was at work and was doing this between other things.

When I got to the TCU, I stopped at the nursing station first. The head nurse was there and they had already been called by the nursing home. I brought up about transportation and she told me they had already arranged a Handi Van. There will be a charge for it, since my mother is being transferred to her “forever home”, not another TCU, but it won’t be a lot. This way, they can use her wheelchair to get her in and out, and can safely secure her for the trip. The nurse suggested I take as much of my mother’s belongings as I can, to make it easier for them to transport her.

Then I went to my mother’s room. My brother had got through to her, and she was very happy with the news. She can’t wait to get out of the TCU!

We talked for a while and worked out what I should take with me for now, and I started taking things to the truck. Then I packed almost all of her remaining things in a couple of hard sided grocery bags, leaving just what she would need for the night and the morning. The head nurse came by and we talked a bit more about the transfer. She even remembered that they need to include Mom’s Pepto supply.

I visited a bit longer and we talked about how things will be done tomorrow, what they will take care of, and how she will be transported in the wheelchair while they bring the walker as well (I was specifically instructed to leave the walker).

My mother then insisted that her wheelchair has been “switched”. That her wheelchair was wider than this one. I told her, it’s the same wheelchair. I scrubbed that thing. I know what it looks like.

Only later did I remember about the cushion. Our vandal had brought her a “wheelchair” cushion, except it was basically just a memory foam cushion for a regular seat. It doesn’t actually fit in her wheelchair. Which is why it would be feeling smaller when she’s in it.

My mother has decided they’ve “switched” the wheelchair and nothing will convince her otherwise. She also claimed they “forgot” one of her meds, and went on about how terrible this place is for taking care of her medications and of her, and how she hoped it will be better in the nursing home.

It will be better, for sure, but not in the ways my mother will understand, and some things won’t change. Even while I was there, with her room mate out, she got mad and demanded I close the door, because someone in the hallway was talking. I closed the door but pointed out that, here she was, alone in the room, and complaining about noises in the hall. She’s going to hear noises in the nursing home, too. Her response was, “I’m not alone, you’re with me.”

…

So I rephrased that her room mate was not there. She will have her own room in the nursing home, but there are other people living there. She will hear noise. There is no escaping that.

I get the impression she believes that in the nursing home, things will be completely silent in her room. Granted, it’s not a transitional care unit in an old hospital, but there are a lot of people living there, and a lot of staff. She also thinks that the staff will all be white and Christian, because this place was built by a local Christian community, I forget how many decades ago. She is familiar with this place, since this is where my father spent his last 6 months, and her sister spent quite a few years before passing. Interestingly, when it came up with the head nurse, my mother talked about her sister living there, which she has brought up before, but she never mentions my father living there. It’s almost as if she’s forgotten my father existed, in many ways – and I don’t mean due to dementia. Which really doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. Ah, well.

Hopefully, things will work out. When my father was there, he always spoke about how well they were taking care of them and he would tell them how much he appreciated them.

That’s not something my mother is capable of, unfortunately, and I strongly suspect that, probably within days, she will find things to be angry about, and she will likely be lashing out at people before long. It is just the way she is.

Overall, though, it was a better than usual visit, even though she got mad at me for things like putting some of her items in the box of the truck, covered and hidden from view, because it doesn’t lock. She thinks people will steal her odds and ends. In fact, as I was leaving, the last thing she said to me was to keep her stuff safe. She’s more worried about her possessions than anything else!

Some things just don’t change.

Meanwhile, I have also been in touch with the rescue. They are happy that Bug is back in the isolation shelter. I’m really hoping all goes well, and we can get cats into the carriers in the morning!

It’s time for me to go out and feed them now. I want to make sure the isolation kitties get their fill of cat soup before we have to remove the bowl this evening. We’re going to have to be up quite early and, once we get two cats into carriers, the other cats will get their morning feeding.

Wish us luck! We’re going to need it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 garden progress, surprise worms, and home!

May 18, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I must have been way more exhausted than I thought.

The night before was one of those nights were I just didn’t sleep. Not restless or busy brain or pain, just… awake. Until about 4am.

Last night, I decided to try going to be early. I was in bed and messaged my daughter in the hospital, asking how she was doing, shortly after 8:30pm.

I fell asleep before she answered me.

When I woke later, needing to de-cat myself so I could go to the washroom, I checked the time, expecting it to be 3 or 4am.

It was barely past midnight.

I figured for sure I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again – and then I was awakened by cats crashing around in my room. Sure enough, it was about 5:30am, which is about when Ghosty goes into desctructo mode to wake me up and feed them.

So I did.

It was starting to get light out, but I went back to bed, expecting to not be able to fall asleep again, but I tried anyhow.

I opened my eyes and three hours had passed.

So I quickly got up and got ready to do my outside routine, which I always get done before I have breakfast. Especially when I end up going out later like this, because I know the outside cats would be quite hungry.

After feeding the cats I did my morning rounds, which includes checking all the garden beds. We had a “wintery mix” all night, and it was still raining. The sump pump has been going off, so the garden bed in the old kitchen with the vinyl cover, were I’d added the soaker hose, was being watered from below. The hose from the sump pump drains into a hole under the raised bed wall closest to the house, but it doesn’t go far, so it usually overflows into a path as well, but enough gets under the bed that it makes a difference.

When I got to the poly covered bed in the main garden area, I saw that water had collected in pools at the sides, where it’s weighted down by boards wrapped in the excess poly, again. Enough that, at one end, the weight was pushing the supportive hoop deeper into the ground and pooling more. So I was going to fiddle with the corner so that the water could rain into the bed when I noticed something odd.

A worm.

Two worms…

Ten?

Handfuls????

For some reason, all along the boards, on both sides, there were masses of earthworms in the water. In some places, I could see worms that had somehow managed to squeeze up the outside of the boards, under the poly. There were so many of them, I gave up trying to just drain the water. I unrolled all the boards and straightened out the poly, draining all the water away and taking out every stray would I could find. Amazingly, most of them looks like they were still alive, too!

Unrolling the poly required loosening the secured ends and removing the clips. When I rolled the boards up in the excess ploy again, I did it from below (which is much more awkward!) and in such a way that the poly now wraps completely around the outside of the raised bed’s log frame.

I was just finishing securing the second end when my daughter came out, asking if I could hear my phone or not.

I could hear nothing over the sounds of the poly as I fussed with it.

My older daughter has messaged us. She was free. Knowing it would take a while for us to get there, they told her to let us know first, and they would start the discharge paperwork and go over her prescriptions.

We had already prepped a back seat in the truck yesterday, and I decided to bring my walker along, just in case, which meant securing it in the box of the truck with some Bungee cords, so it would slide around as we drove, and we were soon on the road. Neither of us had eaten yet and it was past 10am by then, so we stopped at the next town to get a bit of gas, some beef jerky to tide us over, and a couple of energy drinks.

As we were driving in, I saw a gas station we would pass on the way out with gas at $1.729. We had gotten gas at $1.849, but most places in the city were $1.809. I decided it was worth getting more gas on the way back.

One of the things we asked my daughter was to find out where the pick up zone was, as I figured there was no way it was at the doors we’d gone in through when we visited.

It was those doors.

With my younger daughter to rubber neck for me while I was driving, she spotted the curb cut that passed as the entrance. Once we pulled in, I still couldn’t figure out where to park; at the doors was a fire lane, so no stopping at all. My daughter spotted some parking spots that looked like part of the patio, but the signs on the back wall said “permit only”. There was a truck sitting in what looked like the middle of the patio area, surrounded by several large, kidney shaped raised flower beds. That turned out to be where only 3 drop-off zone parking spots were, which I had to back into, because there was no room for me the truck to turn in. Thankfully, the “permit only” parking spaces were empty, because I had to pull into one of those to have room to back up.

Half hour only, paid parking only.

At least this time, I could use a machine in the lobby to pay for parking, rather than use a frickin’ website.

My daughter went ahead to get her sister while I took care of paying the parking, then waited in the lobby area for them. My older daughter was looking so much better! She was walking normally again, and she looked so happy to be leaving. She’s been stuck either sitting or lying down for the past week, with tubes and wires hanging off of her, so just being upright and moving made her feel better, too.

Once we had her settled into the truck, we headed out of the city, stopping to fill the tank at the one gas station with the lower price that I’d seen. Our next stop was going to be the pharmacy in town, so she could get a file set up and fill her prescriptions. Most of it will be vitamins.

I forgot, though.

Today is not Sunday. Today is a holiday Monday.

It wasn’t until I saw the empty parking lot at the pharmacy that I realized that. They were closed.

Which means my daughter won’t get her meds for the rest of the day.

We’re going to have to get back tomorrow, as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, my daughter was absolutely craving a meaty burger. The hospital food was good, but had no seasonings. Especially lacking in salt – and we don’t normally use a lot of salt in our cooking at home!

So we stopped at the DQ and got her a triple burger. Red meat, fat and salt – all the things she needs right now! 🍖🥩🧂🥓🍔

Actually, we all got triple burger meals to bring home. Can’t leave my husband out of the treat!

Once everything we settled and done, and it was time to feed the outside cats again, I stayed out to check on things and see what I could get done. Which is when I realized we had completely forgotten to turn on the shop lights over the seedlings (to make up for where the LED lights can’t reach), so I headed down to the basement, where I found a lovely surprise.

Our very first bi-colour pear gourd has emerged!

The second picture is the early White Vienna kohlrabi I started, just in case the ones outside don’t take. So far, only the chamomile has not sprouted yet.

That done, it was time to head outside.

It had stopped raining, though everything is still very wet, so there was only so much that could be worked on after the cats were fed. I was able to get back to that raised bed at the chain link fence, first securing the vinyl strips protecting the back wall that got pulled up by the winds. Then I started laying out the deadwood I’d stripped of bark along the front wall. It turned out I had enough stripped pieces to cover the bottom from end to end, so I no longer needed to strip any others.

Here is how it looks, as of now.

I actually went into the spruce grove to try and find more long, straight pieces, and found a few poplar that weren’t too wonky. I still have a pile of what we collected in the fall, but they are too short to set between the stakes.

I need more stakes. If I’m going to use skinny, short pieces to fill in the gaps so the soil won’t fall out, I’m going to need a lot more stakes.

They won’t need to be as tall as the ones that will support any hoops or whatever we use to hold protective covers, and I won’t bother charring them. That will have to be a job for another day, though.

I will also need to make stakes for the ends. With how narrow this bed is now, it will be a lot easier to do those, and I can use the shorter, but much more flexible pieces we collected in the fall.

One that’s all done, I can finally return the soil I removed.

Which will need to be sifted, because the cats have been using the pile as a litter box.

*sigh*

Once the soil is returned, that bed it doing to need to be covered with netting immediately, or the cats are going to be all over it. Not just to use as a litter box, but they love to roll around in loose soil.

I’ve actually ordered another hoop kit with fiberglass rods. A different kit from last time. This one doesn’t come with little gardening gloves (well… little for my simian hands), but it does come with ground staples – ground “nails” they call them – with “gaskets”. The fiberglass rods are 16.5inchs long, and this kit has 60 of them, plus the connectors. These connectors are metal instead of plastic, so I’m curious to see which ones last longer.

I had been trying different materials to make hoops, and things like the Pex pipe work well, but for the price, I’m getting a lot more hoops out of these kits than out of the Pex pipe. Plus, the lengths can be adjusted as needed; just use the connectors to add more rods. Whereas once I’ve cut the Pex to size, that’s it. I’d have to get pretty creative if I want more length.

Once I have more of these hoop kits, I will be adding them to the bed along the retaining all in the old kitchen garden that I finished last year, and probably just keep the hoops on the bed, even if any covers are removed. With this bed, I want the supports to be permanent, while also making it easy to work in between them. I’ll try it with these hoop kits first and see how it goes. Since they are fiberglass, they’ll handle weathering well.

As it is right now, that front wall is pretty much the same height at the back wall. Once I accumulate more stakes to better secure it, I might increase the height a bit while also filling in the gaps with thinner material. We’ll see.

I was debating what to plant in this bed. With the chain link fence right there, anything that climbs would be ideal. Maybe some winter squash. Once they are big enough that any protective cover can be removed, I won’t have to worry about the deer eating it, like they do with things like peas and pole beans.

Looking at the forecast, we’ve got one more cooler day, with a couple more nights of frost, then thing things will warm up substantially – but we are now getting rain forecasts starting the day after tomorrow and continuing for the next 5 days! At least, that’s what the weather app on my phone says. Not so much the one on my desktop. Hopefully, it’ll be nice enough that I can get the last beds prepped that weren’t done in the fall. I don’t mind the combination of heat and rain. Better than the usual drought!

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get our seed potatoes into one of the main garden beds that were prepped last fall. They could have already gone in by now, but it can still wait for a while longer. At this point, other than things like other varieties of peas I’d like to try, and seeing if I can get some onions transplanted, most things can’t get done until possibly the second week of June!

Weather willing.

Little by little, it’s getting done – and this year, we really need to have a good gardening year, because the grocery prices just keep getting worse.

The Re-Farmer

Yes, more snow, plus updates and moving the chicken coop

May 16, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

*sigh*

Woke up this morning to falling snow.

It didn’t take long for things to warm up enough that the snow on the ground melted away, but it was a bit longer before the snow turned into a light rain. Yes, we need the moisture, but we also need warmer temperatures! Especially overnight.

We were able to message with our older daughter, who is still in the Women’s Hospital in the city. There was a possibility that she might come home today. They were asking her how far away she lived, so they knew she needed some advance notice before the discharged her. They were waiting on some test results, first, though.

They didn’t get the results until about mid afternoon.

She didn’t come home today.

They’re changing her meds a bit, and are saying she might come home tomorrow.

She is just itching to get out of there!

It wasn’t until late afternoon that things warmed up enough to make working outside more pleasant. As a bonus, my brother and SIL came out to work on their set up. My younger daughter and I went over to their caravan to say hello and visit for a bit, and I got to show off my new wheels.

Before my daughter went inside, I got her to help me with a couple of things. One was to take off the vinyl covered garden bed cover in the old kitchen garden, and move it completely aside. I’ll do a separate post on garden progress, next. Then I showed her a location I thought would work out for the chicken coop that looked the most level. It’s where I’ve been trying to get wildflower mixes growing, but the cats keep using the loose soil as a litter box, or to roll in, killing off anything that might have germinated. She agreed that it looked like a good spot, so I gave it a through raking while she set the ramp up in the coop, so it wouldn’t drag sideways on the ground while we moved it.

Moving the coop was a real pain. Aside from both of us being rather broken, we can only pick it up by our fingertips. Once we’re more settled with it, I’m going to find some way to modify it, so we can move it around more easily.

We set it almost where I wanted it to be, and I worked on the rest. I wanted to set the coop on top of the bricks that used to line one side of the low raised bed I’ve been slowly redoing, but I wasn’t sure if I had enough. I loaded the wheelbarrow and started by laying them out along the back of the coop, just to see how many were needed for the length of it.

It turned out to be 10, with the last brick turned at a right angle.

Once I worked that out, I set the bricks out as straight and even and tight against each other as I could, before very carefully lifting the coop, one end at a time, on top. Then I immediately set bricks under the front corners, just to level it.

It turned out I had another 10 bricks in the wheelbarrow, so a prepped those before getting another load for the sides. I don’t know where these bricks were re-purposed from, but I made sure to use the ones with no, or almost no, mortar still stuck to them. There was more raking and leveling and careful placement, but I finally got it done – and had extra bricks.

The first image above was taken after the coop was moved. I didn’t open the door to let the ramp down until all the bricks were in place.

The next pictures show how the bricks were laid out, including the extras I set along the back and sides. I wanted it on bricks so the wooden frame wasn’t touching the ground. Yes, it’s painted, but it would still end up damaged by moisture and rotting faster.

What I’m not sure of is if anything would burrow under it to get at the chickens. Raccoons and skunks are both known to kill chickens. Ideally, we would set wire mesh around the outside edges by about 2 feet. Which is something that would have been done before setting the coop on bricks. We still need to figure out about securing it. With the wind storm we just had over the past couple of days, it was fine, and that location was more exposed than this one. It might be fine as it is.

Something to consider, still.

I’m glad we finally got it moved and set up on bricks, though. We can figure out the rest later.

Meanwhile, here is a beautiful Lady Adam, and I am rather perplexed by her.

I know Adam has had kittens, but she has been staying around the house a LOT for a mama that just gave birth. She has allowed me to feel her belly, while she’s on the cat house roof, eating. At first, it seemed I was feeling at least three active nips. Maybe more. Then, I was able to feel two, full and swollen with milk. The last time she allowed me to feel her belly, they weren’t swollen anymore. That could mean that she’d nursed her babies before coming to the house for food, but she is always around the house. Even more than usual. Does this mean she lost her litter? Or has she abandoned them? We have no way to know, without knowing where her “nest” is.

I don’t know what to make of it.

As for the cats in the isolation shelter, we are having zero success in socializing them. When we open the windows to give them their cat soup and fresh water, Bug is the only one that tolerates contact. Furriosa glares at me before moving out of reach. The other two just run away, as soon as I open a window. They aren’t even tempted by squeeze treats!

I did change out their litter box today – since I have to open the ramp door to do it, it has to be done quickly, so none of them escape, so I quickly remove the dirty litter pan and immediately replace it with a freshly prepared on, then quickly close up the ramp door. I’ve been able to add more toys for them as well, though I’ve yet to see them actively playing with any of them.

When it comes time to get them to the clinic – Furriosa is to be done first – I honestly don’t know how we’re going to manage it. We might be able to get Bug into a carrier, but the others will not allow us to touch them. How are we supposed to get them into a carrier, if we can’t reach them? Especially if they go into the lower level.

*sigh*

And these are among the friendliest, most gettable females.

We have got to figure something out.

Anyhow.

After I was done with the chicken coop, I worked in the garden for several hours and got good progress done.

Which will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Everything, all at once!

May 15, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had one real goal today. That was to visit my mother in the afternoon.

While doing the morning routine over the past week, my younger daughter and I had been making sure to open the gate, just in case. It was late morning when we heard a honk and I saw a thing of beauty.

The septic truck had arrived!

I headed out to meet him as he got out to check on where he needed to set the truck up. He was apologetic about not getting back to me about the delay – he’d lost my phone number! I was just glad his truck was up and running again, and he could make it at all.

Once he confirmed that he could back up around the back of the house – I wasn’t sure if our straw bale would be an issue or not – he opened up the tank to check inside. I told him about how we’ve had things backing up into the basement because there seems to be a bottleneck that I estimate to be roughly under the wall. He mused about how something like that could be fixed until I told him it was a cast iron pipe joining plastic. He just shook his head. Cast iron, over time, can start crumbling, and it’s likely near the join with the plastic pipes. As for fixing it, I told him I figured it would require tearing up the concrete and replacing the pipe. He said we’d have to excavate outside, too. I mentioned this had been done, before we moved out here and he wondered why it wasn’t fixed them. I told him, no one knew. My dad was living here alone by then. With just one person, it wasn’t a problem. He understood.

With the tank open, I stayed out on cat watching duty, to make sure none came too close to the open tank. Which is much easier, now. The rescue took so many of the cats, there’s a huge difference in what we’re seeing. Even when I check the sun room critter cam at night, I have been seeing no cats at all, many times, or just a few in the cat beds. None of the swirling masses we used to get! With the very loud truck, the cats almost all immediately disappeared. The Grink was the only one that came to check things out, and it was easy to persuade her to leave.

He was done very quickly and was soon leaving the yard, stopping when I came out with the envelope of cash we had ready for quite some time now, to pay him. Every time we’ve done it this way, he’s never even looked in the envelope, trusting me that I had the right amount. Of course, I tip him, too. Always. There have even been times when I couldn’t get to a bank machine to get cash before he came out here, and he just did the job and told me where his house was, trusting I would drop the payment off when I could.

He may be more expensive than other places; I don’t actually know for sure anymore, but I wouldn’t want to go with anyone else.

When he left, it was late enough that I was going to get changed, have a quick lunch, then head out to my mother’s.

Which is when the phone rang.

Earlier in the morning, I’d noticed that the wind was tearing off a tarp covering one of my brother’s pieces of equipment. It was too torn up for any chance to secure it again, so I took some video and sent it to my brother. He called to thank me for that, and asked if I could get some measurements, so he could pick up another tarp. So I quickly got some shoes on again and headed over with a measuring tape to get the info for him. He might come out tonight to take care of it.

Not too much longer, I was on the road to my mother’s for what turned out to be an okay visit. She was having one of her better days. The last time I was there, she had asked for a couple of apples because she missed having fresh fruit. I’d passed that on to my siblings, because I knew it would be a while before I was back. When I reached her bedside, I saw an apple on her tray, so I knew my sister had come by on her day off and remembered to bring some for her – I had completely forgotten. Once my mother was settled on her bedside, she picked up the apple and reminded me that she’d asked me to bring her apples. I guess my sister bringing her apples wasn’t good enough??

The next thing I knew, she was talking about giving me some money to get something for her, but started talking about her vision, her vison, her vision… Her vision is so important. She started going down a rabbit hole so I cut in to ask what it was she wanted me to get for her.

The eye vitamins. Because they’re only giving her the eye vitamin once a day, not twice, and she wanted me to get the gel type that she used to get in her bubble packs.

I told her, the TCU has her prescription now, not the local pharmacy – and they were definitely giving her her eye vitamin, twice a day. She insisted they were not; she was supposed to get it at the end of the day, as well as in the morning, but she wasn’t getting the second one. When I didn’t immediately agree with her, she started saying “oh, you think I’m stupid… you’re just like them… you’re taking their side“, and so on.

She also said that her vision was getting worse, because they weren’t giving her the eye vitamin, and that it was for both eyes.

I explained to her again, she has two different problems. The vitamin can only help with her left eye. For her right eye, she would have to go into the city to get the eye injection, because there is only one place that does this treatment. I even tried to ask her how her vision is getting worse. “It’s getting dark“. I asked if it was with one eye or the other, and what did she see if she covered one eye, but she wouldn’t do it and just made like it’s both eyes going the same thing.

That conversation got nowhere.

As we were chatting, her new room mate was wheeled in and transferred to her bed, promptly falling asleep. The privacy curtain was already pulled and we just kept talking. At one point, I spotted a tiny insect flying near one of my mother’s eyes and I mentioned it was there, in case she saw something moving in her peripheral vision (which is pretty good, based on the last tests she had). Her response?

Her room mate sleeps with her mouth open.

???

This confused me so I asked what that had to do with anything. She talked in circles for a while before dropping it, but she said enough that I realized she thought the insect had come from her room mate’s mouth, because she sleeps with her mouth open.

?????????

Meanwhile, I started to get messages from home.

The tree company had arrived.

My daughter and husband knew which tree was being assessed for removal, but there were details they weren’t sure of, so we messaged back and forth on that, while I told my mother about my brother wanting to hire a company to safely remove the tree.

My mother started saying, she planted that tree there, and did I know why? Yes. It was for shade. She’d told me before about how the sun through the kitchen window made it so hot. I suggested it would have been easier to put up a curtain (that window did have curtains, but they were lacy things that did not block any light), so she started telling me about how, at her childhood home back in Poland, they had a cherry tree right by the house. I pointed out, they didn’t have a basement. Oh, of course – no one had basements! So I talked a bit about how this tree’s roots were causing cracks in the basement wall, and the branches were threatening the new roof.

She brought up the extended pruning saw that should have been here. I told her I use it often, but it can’t be used on these branches. They’re just too big, and if we cut them, they’d fall onto the roof. So she started to give instructions on how we could put a rope around the branch to pull it so it would fall the way we wanted it to. I told her, that might work somewhere else, but not over the roof. It would be much better to get someone with the proper equipment and get it down right, with no risk to the roof. Oh, it’s not my business anymore.

…

*sigh*

I didn’t stay for too much longer, as my mother was looking forward to Bingo starting soon. Before I left, I stopped at the nursing station and talked to the nurse that gave my mother her meds this morning, and would again, at supper time. I told her, my mother keeps insisting that they are not giving her the second eye vitamin.

It turned out that not only is she getting it at both breakfast and supper time (it has to be taken with food), but the pill is so big, at my mother’s request, they break it in half for her. She always sets out the pills on her tray and counts them out, and when she does that, she counts the two halves as one pill, recognizing that they belong together (she has another half pill, but it’s tiny, and she takes only one half at a time).

The nurse promised that she would make sure to explain to my mother that the big pill split in half is her eye vitamin, and why she’s taking it with her supper, not at the end of the day. We talked about some other pills she has issues with, like one that she is completely convinced she used to take twice a day, but she only ever took once a day.

That done, I headed out, but not home, yet. I went to the feed store to ask about the chicks. The woman who was working out the splitting of the minimum 24 chicks order was not there. I talked to the guys that were that and was told that, if she hasn’t called me by now, she wasn’t able to confirm the arrangement. One of them made a note for her to call me when she is back next week.

Then I confirmed the date the chicks will arrive.

It’s the same day I’m supposed to bring three of the isolation cats in for their spays.

Crud.

I would be dropping them off at 8am, though, and they said the chicks tend to arrive at 11am or later, so we would have time to drop off the cats, then drive to the feed store to get the chicks. We would then have to take them home and get them set up in a brooder before I would have to drive back to pick up the cats and bring them home!

That’s going to be a lot of driving.

While there, I got an extra 40 pound bag of kibble, plus a chick feeder and waterer, both gravity fed. I’ll get the pine shavings and chick feed another time. I may not be able to get chicks, if I can’t split a minimum order with someone, but if that doesn’t work out, I know people I can guy adult laying hens from.

On the way home, I remembered to stop at the post office. I wasn’t expecting anything, but it’s been a while.

I’m glad I did.

I got a letter from the health care system. I’m booked for a pelvic ultrasound on June 9, in the hospital that’s literally across the road from the vet clinic we get spays and neuters done at. 😁 The appointment time is in the afternoon, which will be much easier for us to get to.

I’m surprised I got the appointment so fast. My younger daughter had to wait for almost a year before she got an ultrasound done, but the images weren’t clear, so they want to to come back. That was two winters ago.

Meanwhile, there isn’t much news from my older daughter. Things are improving, but not where they should be, yet. She really wants to just go home. Which I can understand, that’s for sure! Still, it means we have no idea when she’ll be discharged.

While today was nowhere near as windy as yesterday, we were still dealing with high winds – though we didn’t lose any trees, where I could see! – and it was overcast and rainy. The sort of weather that always makes me sleepy. After I got home, I settled at my computer for a while, watching the latest Tasting History video, and fell asleep in my chair! Aside from the evening cat feeding, the only thing I managed to get done outside today was a bit of clean up in the old kitchen garden.

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to freezing or lower – I made sure the heat lamp in the isolation shelter was plugged in and on – and tomorrow is supposed to be chilly. Which is actually a good time to do some of the direct sowing I want to do. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work on that. I’m also hoping to finally get my mother’s old mattress and box spring to the dump, but we shall see when the time comes. We’ve got a few chilly days ahead, then we’ll warm up moderately. There is still much to do out there in the garden, and the month is already half over! The long range forecast says we’re supposed to suddenly get very hot during the day, approaching 30C/86F, and staying high for all of June.

We’ll see what actually happens.

For now, though, I need to get any seeds that prefer cold soil direct sown right away.

At some point, I’ll be able to get back to working on the walls of that garden bed!

What I really want to do right now it crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

It begins

March 22, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, sort of. More like a tease.

Today’s expected high is -1C/30F, which we’re supposed to hit later this afternoon. It’s bright and sunny, though, and feels a lot warmer.

It was -12C/10F when my daughter did the morning cat feeding.

While doing the second feeding of the day and a few other things around the yard, I found myself needing to skirt around this.

There it is. The tease.

As the snow melts, this area becomes a bit of a pond. Some years, it’s part of a moat that encircles the garage and floods the pit under the outhouse.

For now, though, it’s a tease. Tomorrow we’re supposed to have a high above freezing, and then the highs are going to be dipping again. We won’t get highs above freezing again for about a week. Everything that’s melting now is going to be ice.

Ah, March. You’re just nasty.

Not a lot to say about today. It has been a bad pain day, of the sort that keeps me from standing in one place for very long. I can walk around, sit, lie down, but I can’t stand for more than a few minutes.

Even so, I’m still the most able bodied person in the household.

That’s rather scary to think of.

My brother had messaged me, saying he was planning to visit our mother and asked if I wanted to meet him there. I told him I wasn’t feeling well today. Which worked out, in a way, as he spent time helping my mother figure out her phone. She hasn’t been able to make outgoing calls. She keeps trying to use the programmed numbers and just not getting that she only needs to see the name on the screen, then hit the green button. In the end, he told her to just direct dial, like she always has before. They tested it out by calling here, so I was answering the phone quite a few times.

I later found out that my brother crossed paths with our vandal and his wife. They were going to visit my mother and happened to get to the doors to the TCU (which require a code to get in) at the same time my brother did. My brother, trying to be polite, asked how our vandal was doing, all things considered. His answer? “I’m dying.” … okay. He then said he wanted to talk to our mother alone. !!! There was an uncomfortable moment before his wife said they would come back later.

As my brother was leaving, about an hour later, he found them still hanging out not far from the TCU doors.

I really wish there were some way we could keep them away from my mother; he obviously is after something. The staff have been warned, but there’s really little they can do, since we don’t have any sort of court order.

What we do know is that he’s been telling my mother about things like his funeral already being planned out and paid for. It makes us wonder if he applied for and was accepted for MAiD, which is currently the 5th highest cause of death in Canada. My mother would not approve, of course, since it goes against our religious beliefs. It’s one thing to allow death to happen as peacefully and painlessly as possible, and deliberately killing someone. It’s not our business, except we worry about what he is say to Mom. She should not be burdened with his health problems. Lord knows, if my current issues turn out to be cervical cancer or something, I would NOT be telling my mother anything other than “I’m not feeling well”, unless I absolutely have to – and even then, I’d be telling her as little as possible. She does not need that burden, and she can’t handle that sort of thing at the best of times. Which leads me back to wondering, what is it he’s trying to guilt her into doing for/giving him, and why is his wife helping him do it? With all the threats of some sort of retribution he’s made against me and my brother, and claiming we caused his cancer, it frustrates me that he’s working his way into my mother’s good graces again so easily.

That’s one of the frustrating things about him. We’ve learned that when things are quiet from him, it has generally meant that he’s been doing things in the background that he springs on us, later on. I would have hoped that, when facing his own mortality like this, he would have tried to give up all that toxic stuff, but he has instead doubled down and gotten worse.

Well, if he is, I guess we’ll find out eventually.

It does make me glad I wasn’t up to going over there today. He’s been trying to wheedle himself into my brother’s … trust? … to turn him against me. If I were there at the same time, who knows how he would have reacted, or how he would end up treating my mother, after we left.

What a thing to have to even think about.

The Re-Farmer

Can’t be soon enough

March 16, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

But first, the cuteness!

I have no idea what’s going on with Grommet’s face! I think I caught him with his mouth open.

I actually got this picture yesterday, while going in and out during the cookout. I’m really glad we did that yesterday, as I don’t think I would have been up to it, today!

I did get the morning cat feeding done outside – and discovered the cats had somehow unplugged the larger heat lamp again. We hit around -25C/-13F during the night, and the thermometer in the sun room was at -15C/5F this morning. The heated water bowl had ice forming at the top!

That done, it wasn’t long before I ended up going back to bed.

Getting the truck back from the garage can’t happen soon enough. I know, my brother got his truck ready for us to use, and I would be okay driving it for short distances, but that’s about it. I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable driving it to, say… our doctor’s clinic.

TMI warning.

As soon as we get our truck back, I need to re-book my doctor’s appointment. As someone that’s been post-menopausal for almost 20 years, I should not be having another period. Having one last month is why I booked an appointment in the first place.

I don’t feel sick. Aside from very normal feeling mild cramps, I’m not in any other pain. I have no other symptoms typical for this sort of thing to happen. It’s just… there.

Ideally, the truck will be ready tomorrow, or it might be the day after. Hopefully, replacing the differential again (under warranty) is the solution, because they can’t find anything else wrong with the truck. It should not be doing the things it’s doing! Kinda like my body right now. Once it’s back, I’ll call the clinic and book a new appointment – for the third time!

The clinic is booking appointments 4 weeks out right now, but perhaps they’ll have a cancellation or something that could get me in sooner.

Once we have our own transportation again.

The Re-Farmer

Some news

March 11, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness.

Kinda creepy cuteness, though…

Beep Beep and Susan in a cuddle puddle.

That eye, though… it wasn’t blinking. Just… staring like that…

👁️👁️

Anyhow…

I got some news from the garage today. They think that they got a bad differential, and are now working to get me a new one, on warranty. Which makes sense, since that shaking and shuddering started right after it was installed. The weird electrical stuff is probably unrelated, but who knows, with this truck!

No time line yet, though. They are closed now, but I hope to get some info tomorrow. We need to at least a small grocery shopping trip for the fresh stuff, plus a trip to the mail.

At least my husband’s prescription refills will get delivered as usual, tomorrow!

Hopefully, we will get the truck back soon. It might be nice to stay home, but not to much when it’s not a matter of choice. Having zero transportation a real problem.

The frustrating thing is to get lectures and “advice” from my mother, and even my sister, though through conversations with my mother. With my mother, she can’t understand vehicle stuff, so I don’t bother telling her details. That doesn’t stop her from deciding she knows everything and can start telling me what I should be doing. Even just telling her, we don’t know what the problem is, and the garage is having a hard time finding it, her response was to say, “can’t they find someone who can?” or “… someone who knows what they are doing?” As if hopping from garage to garage will find someone who can magically know exactly what’s going on, instantly. Then telling me to get a new truck, buy the truck from my BIL (who isn’t planning to sell it until he can replace it, in the summer), oh, and maybe I could make payments! Uhm… Mom. I’m already making payments. We’d have to get re-financing. To which I was told, I should talk to my brother. He’ll take care of it for me.

…

I told her, I wouldn’t be talking to my brother. I’d be talking to a financing company.

“Oh…”

She also started telling me about a conversation with my sister, and how she was saying that what we need is a second vehicle.

Yeah. We do. But we can’t afford insurance on two vehicles, while also making payments. We certainly can’t afford to be making payments on two vehicles at the same time!

Then my mother told me that my sister should lend us one of their vehicles.

…

I said no, they can’t. My sister uses the car to go to work. My BIL uses the truck. I also told her, I don’t want to be getting anyone else involved in this. I’m talking to my brother about things, and I’m talking to the garage about our options, and that’s it. No one else needs to be part of it.

I don’t know if she got it or not.

Ah, well.

As an aside, I’m happy to say that my mother has been making sure to have her new phone with her at all times, wearing it on a lanyard around her neck. We’ll have to walk her through how to make calls again. She apparently tried to phone us – I think on our land line – but said there was nothing; our phone wasn’t working. Except, of course, it was. She also tried to call my brother and that didn’t work. So she manually dialed a number and got my SIL. She thought she was calling my brother’s cell phone number, but called my SILs cell phone number, instead. We didn’t even know my mother had my SIL’s cell phone number! She was just as surprised as we were. It’s not like the numbers are at all similar.

My siblings and I have been able to reach her, though, and not have to go through the nursing station, which we are all happy about. Strangely, for me, it was a long distance call, and it shouldn’t have been, so my brother will be looking into that.

So the new phone is working out for my mother, even if she’s going to need more help in how to make outgoing calls. She said she asked someone at the nursing station to help her, and they refused, which is odd. I’m sure we’ll get the rest of the story later on.

Hopefully, we’ll soon have our truck back and working properly again, and I’ll be able to visit her again and help her figure things out.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Better than expected!

March 8, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness!

I wasn’t fast enough in getting the picture I wanted. Ghosty and Tin Whistle were snuggled cheek to cheek and looking so absolutely adorable.

They still look adorable, of course.

This morning, I got a pleasant offer from my brother. He was planning to visit our mother today, and wanted to know if I wanted to go along. Since our truck is in the shop again, that meant extra driving to pick me up, then drop me off later. Of course, I accepted, since I have no way of knowing when we’ll get the truck back and I can visit her again.

It was a bonus for him, too. He got here earlier than he’s been able to in ages, which meant he had daylight to check on a few of their things and get some stuff done before we headed out. It was so warm today, I headed out early so I could scrap the sidewalk clear and get a few other things done outside. We hit 3C/37F, and I was absolutely overheating!

An unexpected extra reason for a joint visit popped up. I had talked to my brother about the check my mother gave me, to help with truck repairs. I wanted to be sure she would be okay before I tried to deposit it. He told me that it was fine and to deposit it as soon as possible. So I went to do a mobile deposit.

It didn’t work.

It turned out that when my mother tore the check out off the check book at the perforated line, a tiny piece of the check tore off. It had a bit of the account information on it. Not even a number, but part of the lines and bars around the numbers. So I was going to return it to her, voided, and – if she were still willing – we would help her write a new one.

My brother goes over my mother’s finances with her, regularly, and he was prepared to do that with her today, but he also had her new phone.

Yes, my 94 year old mother now has her own cell phone!

He chose one of the ones we were looking at on Amazon, and it arrived about a week ago. He also ordered a SIM card, but that never showed up. He ended up going to the phone company and, thanks to a deal he could get through his employer, he was also able to get a Senior’s plan for her, at a discount. The batteries were charged, with numbers pre-programmed, and it was ready to go. While we were driving, he had me get it out to test it by calling his cell phone. Which only worked once, because we kept losing signal. There are several cell phone dead zones just like we have at our place, all along this highway, even much closer to the city. Frustrating!

When we got to the TCU, my mother was in the common room with the same guy she’d introduced me to before, working on a jigsaw puzzle again. My mother introduced my brother and I to him and he volunteered to leave for a while, so we could have some privacy. Which was very kind of him.

Once settled in, my brother asked if she remembered about getting her her own phone. She did, so the next while was spent showing her the phone, the charging port, and showing her how to use it. The phone can actually do quite a lot, but all we could focus on was for her to be able to make and receive calls. Because of her vision declining, he made sure the phone he got did things like voice the numbers as she dialed them. The buttons are large enough that she had only minor issues in hitting the right ones. He showed her how to use the contacts list and got her to call my cell phone, then to manually dial to call our landline at the farm – I made sure to message the family that they were about to get a test call! Then, as a way to give our sister my mother’s new phone number, we got her to manually call my sister, too. I thought we might not get her, as she would normally have been at work, but it turned out she had called in sick and was able to answer. My mother could barely recognize her voice, with the cold she had!

There was a fair bit of confusion for my mother, but we managed to keep it low key so that she did not get completely overwhelmed. After a while, we went back to her room so the charging cradle could be set up next to her bed. We talked about how she should keep the phone with her, then set it on the cradle at night, or if she’s napping. I suggested I could make her a phone pouch so she could wear it around her neck. My brother, the excellent planner that he is, had already picked up a lanyard long enough, so now my mother can always have her phone on her.

My mother did start to worry about “what if’s”, and being able to call out on her own. We told her that even if she has issues, we can now phone her directly, and not have to go through the nursing station and get transferred to a cordless phone. That made her very happy. Then she was worried about knowing her own phone number. My brother had it hand written down for her, on the large print instructions he’d printed out for her so she could read it more easily. She had trouble reading the number, but not because of her vision. It was because it wasn’t written out the way it was “supposed” to be. Mostly with the 7’s. Sevens must have a line across them. Without that, she couldn’t tell the difference between a 7 and a 1, she said. Which didn’t make much sense under the circumstances, but it was a simple matter to just add the marks she insisted the numbers had to have! In the end, she was quite happy with the phone, which was a huge relief.

Next, my brother went over her finances with her. That is it’s own challenge, as she has trouble understanding some things, and kept asking about things he just didn’t get a chance to get to, yet. He kept having to back her up to go over things he needed to show her first. Some of it involved having to explain why her “rent” is so high – it includes her meals, medications, etc. Everything they do for her. The check she wrote to our vandal was in the list on his printouts for her, and he took the time to explain to her that she had to be very careful writing large checks like that, or she won’t have enough to pay her accommodation charges.

Which was a good time to return her check to me, for the truck repairs. We explained what happened, and made sure to void it out in front of her, and my brother kept it for her files. After seeing her numbers, I was much more comfortable accepting the money. Once she understood what the problem was, she was quick to send me to get her purse for a replacement check. I wrote it out for her, she signed it, then my brother stopped her from tearing the check out, so he could very carefully do it for her – after clearing the remaining bit of the first check she wrote to me, still attached to the checkbook!

There were a few other things we needed to talk to her about. One of them, my brother had brought up during the drive out. He had needed her photo ID in order to do some things on her behalf, and he told me she only had her citizenship card. Which made no sense to me at all! I knew that, when she turned in her driver’s license, years ago, she immediately went through the process of getting a photo ID instead. The photo IDs look almost identical to the driver’s licenses. I’ve seen it. I knew she had it. But when my brother asked for her ID to use for some of things he was doing for her, she showed him the citizenship card.

So we asked her about that, and she brought out her citizenship card again. It’s a modern, laminated plastic card, but her photo on it is many decades old! My mother made a big deal about how important this card was, but didn’t understand that it was pretty much useless as an ID, if only because her picture on it is so old.

Her photo ID, it turned out, was hidden behind the citizenship card. I got it out and my brother took pictures of it, as the bank was going to need it. It took a while before I could put it back, because my mother had the holder and kept going on about her citizenship card and how important it was, looking at it, taking it out, putting it back in. Eventually, we were able to get the photo ID back in the holder, making sure that it was visible.

Which is when a thought struck me, and I took a closer look.

It expired three years ago. She needs a new one!

This would be beyond my mother right now, but my brother is going to see what he can do to get her a new one. It’s got the wrong address on it, anyhow, but what could we use as an address now? She’s not going to be living here permanently!

My brother said he would figure it out. The main thing is, he got pictures of it and can use it for what’s needed, now.

The necessary things done with, we got to just plain visit for a while. My mother had asked me to bring a cross for her, which I did, and it’s now hanging on the wall where she can see it from her bed. There were hooks already there that I could use. Her room mate had company, one of whom brought two big, very chill, very well behaved dogs. My mother wasn’t happy about that, but she hates having dogs and cats indoors at the best of times. It wasn’t an issue, though, since we were going back to the common room. Before her guests arrived, though, my mother’s room mate was walking back and forth with her walker in the hallway. My mother was absolutely convinced that she was doing it to listen in on our conversation.

Overall, the entire visit went way better than expected. My brother was really worried Mom would lose it over the phone. That’s her typical response when he gets things for her, no matter how much she actually needs it. The last time I saw her, she would go on about how we needed to get her out of there and would start crying off and on. This time, she still had some complaints, but actually seemed to be in a good mood. She was happy that her friend from church had come to give her Communion, like he used to while she was still in her apartment. At my mother’s request, he will arrange with the priest to come and hear her confession before Easter, so she was happy about that, too.

We were able to stay for quite a while, but my brother checked the weather and realized we needed to head out. There was a storm on the way, and he still had to drive me home, first. The storm won’t hit us, though we’re expecting to get snow overnight, but it’s supposed to pass right over where my brother lives.

He messaged me to let me know when he got safely home, just as the snow was kicking in. Good timing!

As he dropped me off at the gate, he mentioned that we need a people gate. I told him, we were planning to make one, and I told him about my plans to make an arbor to make it look pretty, to have plants growing on it, and about where I was intending to set it up. It turned out we are very much on the same page about this, and he suggested it’s a project we can work on this summer.

Now that they no longer have their own acreage, and all his equipment is out here, we will finally be able to get some things done! He’s planning to set up an office in their mobile home, so he can stay out here, work from home, then work on things out here in the evenings.

Knowing him, I expect to have to struggle to keep up! I also expect we will learn a lot from him, and I really look forward to finally being able to get things done. There was so much we expected to be able to do when we moved out here, and had this whole 5 year plan. So much of it went out the window. We knew it would be a lot, but none of us realized just how bad things had gotten, and how many of the tools and equipment our vandal had taken.

This summer is going to be very, very different, that’s for sure!

Right now, though, I’m just focused on getting through this winter, and hopefully having reliable transportation soon!

Meanwhile, we were both really happy with our visit with Mom today. She seemed to be so much better today, and I think having both of us there at the same time really helped with that. She even got to talk to my sister on her new phone, and seemed quite delighted that she could do it!

All in all, it’s been a very good day.

The Re-Farmer

Finally got a visit in

March 5, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yes, I finally made it to visit my mother at the new TCU today! The truck even behaved normally the whole time. 😄

But first, the cuteness!

I got home late enough to do the evening feeding, and couldn’t resist getting a picture of this fluffy beauty.

Zoomed in from a distance, because she? he? is pretty feral and none of us have been able to get close. It does come into the sun room to snuggle with other cats and eat, so that’s encouraging, at least.

I headed out to visit my mother shortly past noon. I made sure to check on the truck before hand, and the clock still showed the right time, and even the door chime dinged appropriately, so whatever gremlin we’ve got in the electrical seems to be napping.

While today was warmer, we’ve been having intermittent snow and “snow showers” throughout the day. The highway was good, though, and while visibility was reduced, it wasn’t by much – at least not while I was on the road.

When I got to the hospital, I went into the wing I thought my mother was in, but it turns out the TCU was in a completely different wing. I did get to see what the long term car section looked like, though. While at the nursing station, looking for someone, I saw a lot of seniors all over, and several of them demanded to know why I was there and what I wanted! Thankfully, a staff member (a janitor, I think) showed up. I told her who I was there to see, and she knew my mother’s name, then led me through the hospital to the wing my mother was in.

I’d brought some stuff my mother requested, including more Pepto. There was someone at the nursing station, and I was able to leave it with her.

I also had a chance to ask about the photos my brother left of our vandal and my sister. Our vandal has visited a couple of times already, and my mother’s been there for just over a week. I was able to let her know that the last time he was there, he ended up with a check for a substantial amount. This is one of the issues with him; he’s managed to get many thousands of dollars our of my mother over the years. In this case, the check was written out by his wife for my mother to sign. I made sure to say, this was just so they know it happened, not that I was trying to blame anyone. Knowing my mother, she probably didn’t need a lot of persuasion and may well has suggested it herself.

The nurse I spoke to took some notes about it, so other stiff will be aware. I also talked a bit about my sister, as they would have her photo, too. I explained that with her, it’s more that both our vandal and my mother can manipulate her so easily. She has caused problems by going along with them when she should have said no.

Then I had to ask which room my mother was in. I had it in one of my family group messages, but couldn’t get a connection to look it up. It turned out I wasn’t even able to send updates to my family, either.

The nurse told me where to go, and I soon found my mother. She has the bed against the window, but her room mate had her curtain completely closed, so I wasn’t interrupting anyone else.

The visit was… difficult.

We started to talk, but there was some banging going on down the hall. I starting going through the bag of things I’d brought for her, but she was very disturbed. She moved to sit in a chair and started to tell me where to put things, then started to cry (it may even have been partially genuine) and complain about it, saying I had to get her out of there. She brought up the banging, and thought her room mate was doing it. !! I said no, there’s some sort of construction or repairs happening. My mother said we could go to somewhere more private and let me to the common room.

Which was directly across the hall from the banging.

At the time, a workman was using a chisel on the edge of a door for what turned out to be the installation of a keypad locking assembly.

The common room clearly had been a hospital room in the past and wasn’t particularly big, but it was in the corner of the wing, so it had two big windows and lots of light. Someone in a wheelchair was at a table working on a jigsaw puzzle. My mother introduced us. She has her own favourite armchair, right in the corner between the two windows, with a hospital bed table. She told me she eats her meals there.

We started talking and she kept telling me how terrible things where and how much she wanted to get out of there. She made it sound like the banging was happening all the time (the work on the door would have started just today), and talking. Apparently, her room mate sleeps all day and talks to herself all night. Which is curious, since both my brother and my sister have said they’ve talked to her during their daytime visits and found her very nice. After a while, the guy working on the puzzle started to leave, and my mother thanked him for the privacy.

As we talked for the next while, my mother was all over the place. She went from complaining about the noise and how she has all this money, but is stuck living there (I told her, everyone else there is in the same situation as her, regardless of money), to talking about how my sister should visit more often (she’s visited my mother twice in the first week), and even complained about my brother and his wife giving her an Easter card. Now. A month ahead of Easter, so that means they’re not planning to visit her on Easter. I reminded her, they are going on a pilgrimage. They’re going to be overseas. When are the leaving? I don’t know. How long will they be gone? For weeks! They’re going to be walking very far! She scoffed, but seemed to realize complaining that they were going on a pilgrimage for Easter wasn’t probably not a good idea! It didn’t stop her from claiming my brother was “running away” from her (he’s visited her more often than I have!), and so on.

I do think I was able to get her to calm down about things a bit. I tried talking about how this was temporary, and just one step to getting her to where she wants to be, and how the system works. She didn’t like that, but she also started to get upset because someone else came into the room and sat in one of the armchairs behind me. She kept glaring at him over my shoulder, and making comments about him being there while she had company. I kept reminding her, this is a public room!

At one point, she started to get things out of her purse, then got up to leave, telling me to wait for her. It turned out she had gone into the hall to talk to the guy working on the door, complaining about the noise, saying it was making her go deaf (my mother’s hearing is better than mine) and started crying again. He told her he was almost done and it wouldn’t be much longer, so she came back in.

I had hoped she had forgotten, but my mother got out her checkbook. She said, she wanted to pay for the work on the truck. !!! I tried to defer, but she insisted. I admit, she was generous about it, in her own way. Normally, she would ask for exactly how much it cost, then write out for an amount to the penny, or somewhat less. She didn’t even ask how much it cost, but told me to how much to write it out for so she could sign it. It will mostly cover the cost of the repairs.

I’m not going to deposit it until I’ve checked with my brother. He manages her accounts very well on her behalf. At one point, she asked me how much was in her account, thinking my brother told her. I said, I have no idea. It’s none of my business! I’m not sure if she approved of that, or was angry I didn’t know. 😄

We talked some more about her living situation and getting her into somewhere permanent. It’s frustrating to simply not know. In the end, it’s the government that decides, through the health care system. We have no say in the matter, but now that she’s in the system, it should work out better than trying to get where she wants to be from outside the system.

I noticed my mother had her rosary around her neck, so I suggested she pray the rosary. She said it gets hard to pray (referring to her own mental function; she does recognize that she is having increased cognitive issues). I reminded her that God doesn’t need words to know what she is praying for. I suggested that, if she starts feeling really anxious, to even just hold the cross on her rosary and use that to keep her mind on God. I couldn’t remember the exact words at the time, but reminded her of Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (yes, I had to look it up – I remember the words, not the chapter and verse! 😄) She immediately knew the verse I was referring to, and it really seemed to perk her up. So we held hands and prayed together, and that seemed to help her a lot more.

Eventually, though, I had to head out, as I knew the roads would not be very good for long. She walked with me to the door. One of the things we’d talked about was the vitamin for her dry macular degeneration, and I’d explained that I made the calls to get a prescription faxed to the nursing station. She said she wasn’t getting them yet, so I said I would ask. Thankfully, because she walked me out, it helped me remember – and I’m glad I did!

They never got the prescription.

We talked for a while, and I said I would call the optometrist where she got the original prescription from and find out what was happening. I was concerned about my mother walking back on her own using her walker, but one of the nurses had seen us and was waiting. She assured me she would get my mother to her room okay.

From there, I made a stop at the gas station to update the family. Not to get gas, though. While I was visiting with my mother, the gas prices went from $1.359 to $1.419!

I’m glad I left when I did, as conditions were starting to worsen, but I got home okay – and the truck behaved the whole time.

As soon as I was settled in, I made a bunch of calls. Apparently, the prescription for my mother’s eye vitamin did get faxed, yesterday. In the end, the receptionist I spoke to said she would try and print out what she had in her system and fax it again, as the optometrist was working a different location until next week. Some time later, I got a call from the TCU letting me know they got it. She then explained that this vitamin comes in two forms. A soft gel, which my mother was getting in her bubble packs, and a tablet form. They only get the tablet form. If my mother wants the soft gel, we would have to provide it. I explained that, with my mother, she believes that because they look different, it’s the wrong medicine – she believes that of all her medications – and that we’ve tried to explain it to her. I said to give her the tablets for now (I don’t want her to go without it, as she is complaining about vision loss), and to explain to her what that specific tablet is. We’ll see how she does with that, for now. If necessary, we’ll have to get something set up with the local pharmacy for those.

I’m glad I finally made it to visit my mother, but it’s so frustrating. I understand why she’s not happy there, and absolutely understand her desire for more quiet. It’s part of what we like about living in the boonies, after all! At the same time, I know my mother well enough to know that a lot of this is self inflicted. My mother is one of those people that always sees the worst in others, and interprets things in their worst possible light. I remember when my father when through a lot of this, and at every stage, he was always so thankful, so grateful, to the people around him, whether it was the home care aids or the nursing home staff. He always let them know how much he appreciated them for how well they took care of him. Every time I called him, he would go on about how great they all were. My mother? She’s the complete opposite, most of the time, and it’s not getting any better as she gets older. In fact, the only person she will speak highly of these days is…

Yup. Our vandal. She says, they’re getting along good now. I reminded her of that last letter he wrote to her, and the horrible things he said to her, and that he hasn’t stopped. He may be behaving around her when his wife is around, but he’s still doing things (I didn’t tell her about him driving by while I was shoveling out the plow ridge, slowing down to a crawl at the end of the driveway). She thinks he’s changed. I said, I hope so, but he’s why my late brother’s two kids now say they want nothing to do with our family, thanks to his lying about us. She dropped the subject.

All we can do is hope she can finally get to the nursing home she wants to be in, but I’m starting to wonder if she’ll even be happy there. There will be people talking in the halls. There will be noise. At least she’ll have her own room, though. Maybe that will be enough.

We shall see.

Nothing else we can do. It’s all up to the system…

… and the system sucks.

The Re-Farmer

A cute accident, and some updates

February 25, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We had some more snow last night. Checking the security cameras, I saw that the road was plowed. We’re going to have to dig out the end of the driveway.

I also started getting a lot of motion detection notifications from the garage cam. I never saw what was triggering it, though.

What I did see was this.

A pair of matching hearts in the snow.

Who made these?

So I started going through the history, checking both stills and video clips. They weren’t there on Sunday, but as I watched myself walking towards the gate to meet my SIL on Monday, there they were, slightly less snow covered, but also less visible in the diffused light at the time.

It took a bit of going over the files more, then remembering that the motion sensor is triggered by people (and the occasional cat or deer), but not vehicles. We haven’t been able to figure out why (this is one of my brother’s new security cameras, not one we got).

My brother and nephew were here on Sunday. I saw them getting into their care to leave, but the camera wasn’t triggered by the care as they backed up towards the driveway then turned to the gate.

These are tire tracks. After the snowfall and in the morning light, they just happen to now look like hearts.

Adorable.

Almost as adorable as these guys.

There’s at least three more cats in there that are not visible in the photo.

Somehow, they got one corner of the hammock off its hook. I haven’t been able to put it back as it can only be reached through the ramp door, which has the box sheltering it. A box that’s currently stuck in place with packed snow and ice.

I took this when I did the second feeding. My darling daughter did the morning feeding for me. It was -27C/-16F at the time. I don’t know what the wind chill was, but when I checked later and we had warmed up to -20C/-4F, the wind chill was -34C/-29F Thankfully, by the time I did the second feeding, there was hardly any wind, so it was just really cold, instead of brutally cold. 😄

In other things, my mother was successfully transferred to the temporary long term care unit in the town she had her apartment in, last night. My brother called them this morning and talked to the nursing staff before talking to my mother. She got there shortly after 7pm in a taxi handivan – and no, we are not going to be charged for that. However, a bag that contained, among other things, my mother’s Pepto got forgotten in the van, and the staff were trying to track it down. The other TCU always uses the same taxi driver for these transfers, as he’s so good with the seniors, so it would be easy to track it down.

As for my mother, once he started talking to her, she started railing about how things were even worse here than where she had just left. It took a while to get to what she was saying, and it seems she was still just rattled from the transfer. She does have a room mate, but she did say that this person was better (by which we understand she means, this is not a person with dementia trying to tell my mother to go away while claiming my mother’s bed was hers).

My brother gave me the proper numbers to call this TCU, though he didn’t have the room number. I tried calling as soon as I could. It went to voice mail so I left a message, but no one got back to me. I texted the contact info to my sister, though. After several hours, I tried again and got through.

I talked to the nurse, first, and asked how things were going. She seemed a bit hesitant in answering, as if she was trying to find the right words. My mother wasn’t quite happy and something my mother told her had her thinking she had been in a single room before. I told her that she had been in a single room while at the hospital, but at the first TCU, she had a room mate. I explained about the roommate having some level of dementia and her behaviour. The nurse was surprised because, while they do have single rooms, those are usually reserved (if possible) for people with dementia that shouldn’t be sharing a room because they might do things like that. She would have expected this other TCU not to place someone with dementia with a room mate. I told her, I didn’t think they had any single rooms!

I remembered to ask about the missing bag.

It turns out my mother thought it was missing because it didn’t go to her room. It contained her medications, which they never keep in patients’ rooms, and was at the desk (they would have a secure lock up for meds). She was even able to tell me some of the items that were in it.

After talking with the nurse, I asked to talk to my mother and got transferred to their cordless phone.

It was a… strange call.

My mother seemed out of sorts, but she was happy to tell me that my sister had come to visit. She was extra happy, because my sister had brought her “cabbage” (sauerkraut) and pickle juice. My mother has been craving something “sharp” to counter what she described as all the sweet she’s been getting. I have no idea what she meant by that. Some of her meals might have a dessert, but that would be something along the lines of canned fruit. Whatever. She’s happy with her “sharp” snacks!

She asked me about the truck at one point and I explained to her that they weren’t able to look at it yesterday, but were hoping to do it today (I’ve still had no word about it, and they are closing soon). That set her off. She started saying how I should “explain to them” that we need the truck. I told her, they know our situation. Oh, but if I just explain to them. I told her, they have appointments. They have to fit the truck in, in between appointments, and need at least a couple of hours to look at where they think the problem is. I then started getting lectures about how other people’s appointments didn’t matter, they should take care of me. Then she started saying how my brother and I need to get together to find a “good mechanic”. Because mechanic always cheat women. When she started to invent accusatory things about how they were cheating me, I had to put an abrupt stop to it and pointed out she had no idea what she was talking about (in regards to the problems we’ve had with our truck), and she shouldn’t start going on like that. We should talk about something else.

After that, I had dead silence. Apparently, if she couldn’t complain about things, she had nothing else to say.

I remembered about the bag that she thought was missing, so I told her that it wasn’t missing. That it had medications in it, so it when to the nursing station, not her room, explaining that they have to lock up the medications.

She didn’t believe me.

She then gave me this description of her the transfer last night, looking into the bag and what she saw in it, how the bag was on the seat of the van and didn’t come in with her. It was still in the van. I told her, the nurse said she had it. Her medications were in the bag, so it had to go to the nursing station, not her room.

My mother didn’t believe they had her medications, either.

…

She would have gotten at least her bed time meds, and her morning meds, by the time I’d called her.

No matter what I said, she refused to believe me that the bag was not forgotten in the van, nor that they had her meds. She finally said she would go to the nursing station and ask them, herself.

There really wasn’t much else to talk about after that. She did say she was glad for the phone calls from me and my brother today. She calls the calls and visits her “second medicine.”

She may still be out of sorts, but where she is now is definitely better than where she was. She did complain a bit about the small size of the rooms (I don’t think she gets just how fortunate she was to have the big room in the hospital, all to herself!) and that she didn’t know the place yet. I brought up that she had told me she’d been there before, to visit people, so I thought she would be familiar with it.

No, she’s never been here before, she insisted.

…

She told this to me not long ago. Even made out like I was stupid, or that I thought she was stupid, to think she didn’t know about this place being in the town’s hospital. Told me how she knew people there and had visited them. Now she’s telling me the opposite?

When I said, she had told me she’d been there before, not that long ago, she just said, well, it’s a big place. So maybe she visited someone in a different ward? I dunno!

The good thing, though, is that she will start getting communion on Sundays from the church she used to go to, and they will likely be done by the same guy that had brought it to her after services at her apartment across the street.

So that’s where we are at with my mother’s transfer. Hopefully, she will settle in and be happier there. She did confirm that her transfer to the personal care home wasn’t cancelled. I said for sure it wasn’t; where she is now is all temporary. If all goes well, she will not be moved again until is to the specific nursing home she wants to be in.

How long that will be is anybody’s guess!

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

healthcare

Good news!

Our 2026 garden progress, surprise worms, and home!

Yes, more snow, plus updates and moving the chicken coop

Everything, all at once!

It begins

Can’t be soon enough

Some news

Better than expected!

Finally got a visit in

A cute accident, and some updates

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: