healthcare

Surgery went well!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

We didn’t need to leave until 11, so the morning was our normal routine. As usual, I started off feeding the yard cats, and got to see these two again.

Colby looks like a real scrapper! That white and grey is so big, I’m starting to mistake it for one of the three from last year that are really small!

Yesterday, I happened to be in the right place to see Sprout lying in the grass in the outer yard, nursing these two, plus the tortie. The calico is definitely the shiest of the four. The orange one, Colby, is the bravest. Last night, I saw him at the top of the ramp into the isolation shelter. Just a little while ago, while gathering bowls for the evening kitten soup feeding, I spotted the tortie inside the cat cage, inside the big no-longer heated water bowl that’s been repurposed as a food bowl in there. I didn’t see it when I brought out the kitten soup bowl, though Colby, was back again.

Last night, after I mused about how far behind parts of our garden is this year, I did go and look at last year’s photos. Wow, are we ever behind this year! At least with the winter squash and melons. At this time last year, the winter squash in particular were getting huge, and by the middle of the month, I was taking pictures of the developing squash with my hand for a size reference. I get a strong feeling we won’t have any winter squash or melons this year! The transplant shock, plus those bugs on the winter squash, followed by that one unpredicted cold night, has really done damage. The eggplants were set back, too; last year, they were in full bloom by now. The peppers are going okay, though, compared to last year, at least.

I’ve also definitely lost at least two of the summer squash that got transplanted out, including one of the White Scallop squash. Last year was a bad year for summer squash, but I think this one might be even worse!

I was done my rounds early enough that I took a quick nap before we left. I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be falling sleep while waiting for my daughter to come out of surgery!

We ended up on the road shortly before 11. My poor daughter was fasting, and was so very hungry! The surgery was booked for 12:30, and we got there shortly before 12. We went to the outpatient clinic first, where she registered and got her paperwork. Then we went to the day surgery section on the second floor. The staff found that, while she was on their list, for some reason her chart wasn’t printed out yet, so we sat down in the waiting room while they took care of that. Which took no time at all, and she was soon passing my her glasses and phone, etc. as they took her in to be prepped for surgery.

She told me afterwards that everything went very smoothly. She was even complimented for not being at all nervous about it, as they strapped her down to the “crucifix” operating table. The staff and the surgeon were all really nice, too. She REALLY appreciated the pre-warmed blankets and towels they used on her, too!

While that was happening, I made a quick trip to the nearby Walmart to get a few things. It started to rain while I was inside. I always bag my purchases at the truck, so I was standing in the rain, filling an insulated bag, when my phone started ringing.

My first thought was that it was the hospital, and why would they be calling me so soon? Did something go wrong???

Nope.

It was the home care office. Not the usual coordinator, but someone who was covering for her at the moment.

She told me that this morning’s home care aid got to my mother’s place 10 minutes late. When she got there, my mother told her she’s already taken her pills. The aid opened up the lock box and this morning’s beds were still in their bubble, of course. I told the coordinator, my mother has a secret stash of her pills somewhere. The coordinator told me something like that had been reported. As for my mother taking them herself after the aid was only 10 minutes late (which means she arrived at the time she was scheduled to leave, rather than the time she was scheduled to arrive), she would have decided the aid wasn’t going to show up at all. I told the coordinator that my mother believes that the aids don’t show up sometimes, because they want her to die. That’s something I’d already told the regular coordinator before, so it’s probably somewhere in the file. This is why she snuck out and hid one of her bubble packs.

I asked if my mother treated the home care aid all right, and was told nothing was reported about any such behaviour. After clarifying with me about the medications, she said she would make notes for the file, then follow up with the aid.

Meanwhile, I got a message from my older daughter. The land line had rung, but she never got to it in time, and she was worried it was the hospital. So I quickly told her it was home care, then finished bagging things up and got out of the rain so I could explain further.

That done, I quickly updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to the hospital. I still had about 2 hours to wait, and I just stayed in the waiting room.

Where I dozed off again!

Why am I always so sleepy during the day, but can easily stay up all night?? It’s not like I’m in my 20’s anymore!

After about an hour or more – my daughter would have been out of surgery and in the recovery room by then – I started hearing a strange noise from the bag of my daughter’s stuff beside me. Her phone was ringing! So I answered it, using my hotel receptionist voice. 😄 Even though I identified the phone as my daughter’s, and that I wasn’t my daughter, the person on the other end launched into their reason for calling. I don’t think she caught on that I wasn’t my daughter!

It turned out to be a clinic in the city. My daughter has been referred to an endocrinologist about her PCOS, and they were calling about an appointment they have for her. I was in no position to take anything down, and explained that I was in the hospital, and my daughter was coming out of surgery just then. We eventually worked out that they will send my daughter a letter with the information, plus they will call back to follow up tomorrow. The appointment is in October some time, so there’s no rush on that.

Not long after, my phone rang. It was the surgery staff, letting me know my daughter would be ready to leave withing half an hour. When she found out I was already in the waiting room, she asked me to go to the main entry, where they have wheelchairs available for patient transport to the vehicle. Standard procedure, and I already knew where the wheelchairs were kept, so off I went.

Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of options. There was the extra wide bariatric wheelchair. I wasn’t going to use that, because they only have one. There was another wheelchair that was so low, it had to be for a child. Then there was another, but it was so narrow, it was probably also for a child, but at least her feet wouldn’t be dragging on the ground. So that was the one I took.

When I got there, the person behind the desk immediately asked who is was for, and I told her. She then went to take it, to go get my daughter. When she saw it, she commented that she didn’t think my daughter would fit! I told her, I wasn’t sure, either, but I didn’t have much choice.

When they brought my daughter out, she was in a completely different wheelchair. 😄 She had her discharge papers in hand, and a package with a couple of cookies in it. She inhaled those as soon as she got into the truck!

As I was pushing her out of the hospital, she showed me her incision site. I couldn’t believe how tiny it was! She said she was also feeling really good, but for safety reasons, she wasn’t allowed to walk out on her own. She had to be careful not to use the hand or arm, because it wasn’t hurting at all, and her mobility was really good.

Once at ground level, we made a side trip so she could use the washroom. As I was looking out the windows, I spotted something moving around.

Something very familiar looking!

They had a grog in their flower garden!

Interestingly, it was only eating the thistles, not the flowers. We had one summer where we had about 5 or 6 groundhogs in our yard, then they basically disappeared. It was really nice to see one again. I did pause at the reception desk on the way out to let the staff know they had a groundhog in there, just in case they didn’t already know. They buggers are adorable, but they can do major damage!

I brought the truck around for my daughter and, once she was settled in, checked to see how she was feeling. Was she up to eating? I knew she would be hungry, but straight out of anesthesia is not always a good time to eat. She said she was famished, so we headed over to a nearby Subway I knew the location of. Just a few bites into her food, and she told me she was feeling SO much better. Post op, they had told her a number of things to watch out for and, if she had any of those symptoms, to get to a doctor right away. This included feeling light headed or nauseous. Which she was feeling, but she was pretty sure it was because she was hungry. It was. Once she started eating, it all went away!

From there, it was straight to home. As we were driving, I updated her on the calls I got on both my phone and hers. As we talked about her referral to endocrinology, I remembered to asked about her referral for a reduction mammoplasty; I knew she had a call about that, and that is why she has an appointment with our regular doctor on the same day that I do, next week. Since I had my own done in this province, I was curious to know how much things have changed. It turned out there are only two doctors in this province that does them. One has his own clinic, while the other is new to our province, and is in one of the city hospitals.

The one with the cardiac clinic that wouldn’t accommodate my husband’s disability, then ghosted him on the phone appointments.

So… I’m thinking going to the doctor with his own clinic would be worth the extra time on the waiting list.

Which could be a year or two!

When I had the ball rolling for mine, the clinic told me they wouldn’t even book appointments past 6 months, and anything before 6 months was booked solid. I was looking at a long wait for surgery, but I was also put on the cancellation list, and my doctor at the time flagged my file as urgent, because of how much pain I was in. I ended up getting in due to a cancellation, within a couple of months. Hopefully, they will be able to do the same for her, but I don’t know that they’re allowed to flag files like that anymore.

It’s good that my daughter is finally getting all this stuff done. Now, if I could just talk her sister into starting to see a doctor, too!

My daughter may have been feeling good after her surgery, but it still took a lot out of her, and she dozed off on the ride home. When we got to the gate, she started undoing her seat belt to open it. I just looked at her, asking, are you up to that?

Nope. She wasn’t. But she was in the passenger seat, so it was automatic! 😄

Now that we’re all inside and settled in, she decided a nap on the couch would be a good idea!

I’m so glad everything went smoothly. She’ll probably start feeling pain more as things wear off, but for now, she’s mostly just feeling drained. I’m still wildly impressed by how small the incision is. Squidly has been evicted! Once it all heals up, it’s going to make a huge difference for her, to be able to use that hand without pain.

Meanwhile, it has still be raining, off and on today. It isn’t a lot, but enough that I don’t need to water the garden this evening. The yard cats got fed as soon as everything was settled in. I’d picked up more pumpkin seed, so I’ve been able to add powdered pumpkin seed to the kitten soup lately, though the adult cats are certainly getting their share. Hopefully, that will help get rid of any worms they might have. I suspect that’s why some of the really small cats and kittens are as small as they are.

Eyelet is so much like Button was in that respect. I have been putting the 4 friendly kittens inside the old kitchen to get a chance to eat the kitten soup before the adult push them away. Only Eyelet and Sir Robin like to stay and eat. Havarti and Grommet will eat a little, then they want out. Eyelet has discovered the plastic couch that’s in there, so when he’s done, that’s where I’ve been finding him. When I picked him up today, his pupils were so dilated, it concerned me. That’s what Button’s eyes started to do, to the point his irises are almost completely hidden. So I used the flashlight on my phone to test, and was happy to see his pupils slowly undilate, before he started blinking and trying to look away. That was a relief.

So that’s where were are at now. It looks like the rain has stopped for now, and it’s been blessedly cooler. It’s supposed to get really hot again in a few days, but I should have at least one cooler day to get some manual labour done outside! Thankfully, I don’t have any scheduled outings for the next while. Unless I get called to do my mother’s med assist, I should be able to get some decent progress in.

We shall see.

I’m so happy my daughter was able to get this surgery done so quickly! It’s going to make a big difference, once everything is healed up.

I’d say it’s been a very good day.

The Re-Farmer

Early morning outdoors

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The plan for this morning was to head out nice and early to get the garden watered before things got too hot.

The problem with that was, at 4am, we were still at 21C/70F out there. We never got any cooler than that, overnight.

Still better than today’s expected high of 31C/88F, so I was heading out somewhere around 6am to get started. The outside cats were a bit confused by the early feeding, though! 😄

The sky was certainly dramatic as I continued my rounds.

(Major interruption; I got a call from home care while typing the above. Guess who had to drive to my mother’s for her morning med assist again? It … was not really a good visit. More on that later.)

Where was I…

Ah, yes.

While I was doing my rounds, I could hear thunder in the distance, but I went ahead and did all the watering, anyhow. It did start raining while I was out there, but barely enough to get my shirt wet.

I did snag what look to be the last of our turnips.

I plan to include them in a large crock pot meal that won’t heat up the house, so we can just reheat individual portions whenever we want. In this heat, none of us have much for appetites, and no one wants to cook.

As I was finishing up outside, I spotted this adorable sight.

With the heat and humidity, the kittens are sleeping a LOT. I didn’t see the wild kittens at all this morning. Hopefully, they had a chance to have the cat soup I put out for them, before the adults ate it all. All the bowls I use for that were empty before I was done, and I was able to gather them all up to the old kitchen, ready for their evening feeding.

Thankfully, what rain we did have made things more pleasant while I was doing the watering.

Once inside, I did have a chance to have breakfast before I started on this blog post, when I got the call about my mother’s med assist. They couldn’t find anyone to cover her 9:30.

Looking at the time as I talked to the scheduler, it was 9:32. They do know it takes me a while to get to my mother’s (just the prefix on my land line would tell them that). I called my mother to let her know I’d be coming and…

She started asking me if I was okay for coming over. After a bit, I figured out she was wondering if I had any appointments or such that was being interfered with. I assured her that I did not; my appointments were yesterday, not today.

She then started to suggest I didn’t need to come. She could take her pills herself.

???

It turns out that, when the pharmacy delivered her bubble pack refills yesterday, she tucked one pack aside (a week’s worth). The home care aid put the rest in the lock box.

I assume the home care aid did not count how many packs there were, to make sure they were all there.

This is not a good thing but, to be honest, I can’t fault her for doing it. Home care has not been reliable.

I told her, don’t touch it. I’ll be right there!

After a quick change, I was on the road and soon at her place.

Where I found her with a recycling bag on the floor, the contents of her recycling bin all over, as she was sorting and stacking the various Meals on Wheels food containers (I don’t even know if they can be recycled). Once I figured out what she was doing, I told her she didn’t need to do that; just put it all in the bag. Today was her town’s day for picking up the recycling, so I helped her bag everything so I could take it out to the stack in front of her building for pick up.

She became angry at me for not tying off the bag correctly.

While this was being done, I noticed my mother had a page from the local free weekly paper she gets. It was the obituary/memorial section.

There was a picture of my later brother and father in there.

The beginning of July is the anniversary of my brother’s death. He’s been doing this for the last 15 years now. When my father passed, he changed the picture to one with both my brother and father in there. The text is a bizarre and completely false claim in regards to this property and a cottage that doesn’t exist. My mother, however, was all gooey about seeing the ad, and isn’t our vandal so wonderful for doing this? He does it every year. No one else does. He pays to do this!

I said to her, you do realize he’s not doing this out of the kindness of his heart, right?

One the one hand, I’m glad his passive aggressive and very public attack on the family is going right over her head. On the other, I’m frustrated, because it’s working. All the abuse and lies and theft over the years, but he paid money to put a picture and lie about my late brother, and that makes him better than me or my siblings.

*sigh*

Anyhow…

After dropping the recycling bag off outside, I went straight into the washroom to wash my hands before getting her meds. The door was open, so she could see me. As I left, she asked me, did you wash your hands?

…

I got her morning meds out, along with her inhaler, making sure to check the front of the bubble pack to get the Friday morning bubble, before opening it from the back.

It wasn’t until I updated my siblings after getting home that I realized, something was wrong.

When I was there to do her morning med assist on Wednesday, I was trying to figure out why her Tuesday meds were still in the bubble pack. When confirming which bubble I needed to open this morning, I saw that yesterday’s meds were gone, as were Wednesday’s…

… and Tuesday’s.

I’d taken a picture of the active bubble pack when I was there on Wednesday, as well as the pack in the lock box, because the pack in the lock box should have had the two Monday evening pills still in it, and it didn’t.

What the heck is going on?

I didn’t clue into that at the time, though, and just kept going.

I had decided that, since I was in my mother’s town, anyhow, I would stop at the grocery store to pick up some of their deli meats that are priced so much better than elsewhere. I told my mother I was going to go to the grocery store, and asked if she needed anything that I could pick up for her?

She thought about it for a moment, then said I could change her bedding for her.

…

Okay.

So I did that, which took a while. Then put away her clean laundry so I could use the basket. Changed her table cloth out for her, too. That done, I explained again that I was going to go to the grocery store after, and did she want anything?

It turned out she missed the part about planning to go for myself, anyhow, and couldn’t figure out why I was going to go to the grocery store for her, when she didn’t need it. I explained again, and she had me check her fridge for her. I pulled a couple of things out of the freezer, but she was still okay in general.

Then she wanted to have a serious talk with me.

*sigh*

Long story short, my mother is still convinced that we should be able to go directly to the nursing home she wants to go to and ask them to take her in. I tried to explain to her that this is not how things work. They’re not like an apartment that you can rent. They are part of the health care system, so they have no say. Plus, the only time they have open beds is when someone dies, and then they have a waiting list of people who want to get in. She kept cutting me off and getting angry as I tried to explain this, and said, they are kind people. There are still kind people in the world. Unlike you.

…

She managed to throw that one at me several times.

She also thinks my SIL, who has always been so incredibly kind to my mother and stood up for her, so many times, is “pulling away” my brother from her. That’s why he never calls (he does) or visits (we were both there just this past weekend).

She also thinks the home care staff that I have to cover for are not showing up because they don’t feel like it.

My mother is a great one for projecting all sorts of motivations onto people, and if I make any attempt to suggest there might be other reasons, she accused me of always taking “their” side on things, and being against her.

*sigh*

After a few more comments about how other people were so kind “unlike you” and making digs at my brother and SIL, my mother started talking about her stuff and how we need to decide who gets the pictures, or if she will donate them to a museum.

She has no understanding of what museums take or why, but she’s convinced these old prints have some sort of incredible value, because she likes them, and she understands that there is value in things…

She also brought up about her health and I reminded her that, if she’s really feeling bad, use the life line. That’s the fastest way to get help, plus they would contact me.

Oh, you know I’m not good with technology.

I reminded her, she just needs to push a button. That’s it. She has pushed it by accident, leaning against her table, as it is.

She’s angry about having the life line, because she’s paying more than $50 a month for it, and they’re not doing anything.

…

*sigh*

So all in all, it was a pretty unpleasant visit with my mother this time. Then, after all her digs about how unkind I was, she actually thanked me for coming out and gave me gas money.

Her digs against me were no big deal. She always has something, and it’s water off a duck’s back for me. The things she was saying about my brother and SIL – two of the most awesome people who have done so much to help her for so many years – that got under my skin. I’m still ticked off.

As for the rest of my day, I suspect the evening watering will be skipped again. The heat is supposed to linger until late, and we currently have both heat warnings and severe thunderstorm warning happening right now. It’s past 2pm as I write this, and we’ve reached 29C/84F, and the humidex has us at 34C/93, and it is MUGGY out there. I hope we do get the storms, but from what I can see of the weather radar, these storms are all coming up from the US and will only hit the southern parts of Canada.

As for me right now, I have this sudden urge to take a nap to recover my sanity.

The Re-Farmer

A quick (ha!) run down

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was my day to go to my mother’s to get her monthly blood test done, so I just did my usual rounds this morning. My daughter was a sweetheart and took care of watering everything before it got too hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but we might also get thunderstorms, depending on which app I check, so we’ll see if we have to water twice again or not. I’m starting this past 9:30pm, and we’re still under heat warnings!

I spotted a couple of the new kittens while doing my rounds this morning. Just the two of them.

I also spotted a garden friend.

What a unique looking frog!

Once the rounds were done, I was soon off to my mother’s.

Going to my mother’s did not go as expected. Which is saying something, since visiting her rarely goes as expected.

The plan was to wait until home care came for the morning med assist, then I would take my mother for her blood work. She’s got a new 2 week schedule, and her morning visits are now at 9:30-9:40am. They seem to switch from 9am to 9:30 fairly often. She gets 10 minutes scheduled in the morning, rather than the usual 5, because they’re supposed to be doing things like emptying her commode and offering assistance in getting dressed. I don’t think they’re doing that. They just give her her meds and leave.

When I got there, I went into the lock box to get the paperwork for this month’s lab tests; it’s a place to store them where they won’t get “lost”. My mother told me to give her her pills, but I said no. We’ll wait for the home care aid to arrive.

Which is when she told me they didn’t come for the two evening visits on Monday…. no… Sunday…

That’s when she showed me the new schedule (the old one was still taped to the wall), where she’d written “no one” around those two time slots. She still kept trying to tell me it was Sunday, but it couldn’t have been.

Since they didn’t show up, she took them herself.

She would have had only Monday left in the lock box, and would have gotten the Monday morning meds from there. The pharmacy tried to deliver her refills later in the day, but she though I’d already paid for them, so she told them she didn’t have enough cash, and tried to say I paid for them. They left her with 1 week’s refills (for free) until it could be straightened out. That got worked out and my mother was supposed to get the refills delivered today. I thought she wanted me to take her to the pharmacy herself after her bloodwork, when I talked to her on the phone last night, but when I got there this morning, she said she was prepared to “pay again”. She’s still convinced she’s being double charged and cheated. Meanwhile, they’re bending over backwards to help her!

Anyhow, this left my mother with a week of pills and no one with the code to put them in the lock box. She’s already had her Monday morning pills, so when no one showed in the evening, she took them from the new package, since the other one was in the lock box. It was pure chance that she took the right day’s pills, since she ignores that completely and gets furious that they can’t give her pills from missed days.

It took me a while to get things straight, and I had to check and recheck things because it just didn’t make sense. When I went into her lock box on Friday, she had a bubble pack that would be finished on Sunday, and a bubble pack with just Monday on it, plus one set of morning pills from a day (a Thursday) that got missed.

The person who saw her Tuesday morning put the new bubble pack into the lock box. The lab requisitions sheets were on the bottom, of course, so I had to take everything out to get them.

The thing is…

Tuesday’s pills are still there. All of them.

The older bubble pack should have hat the two Monday evening bubbles still full.

They were empty.

So what did my mother get, yesterday? She mentioned that an empty bubble pack got thrown out yesterday, but that would have been the one that was finished on Sunday. Did that one also have a full Tuesday’s pills in it? I hadn’t thought so. I had no reason to look too closely at that one.

Meanwhile, time went by and the home care aid didn’t arrive when she was scheduled. My mother started saying, oh, she doesn’t feel like coming today… She is convinced that when days are missed, it’s because the home care aids just don’t feel like doing her pills. Just her, though. She doesn’t believe that the rest of the people on their schedule list aren’t getting done, either.

Finally, I decided to call the number for the scheduler at about 9:45 (this is relevant) and left a message explaining that the aid had not arrived yet, and that I had to take my mother for blood work, so I would do her meds myself.

When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine. It was the scheduler, telling me they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.

The time stamp on the message was 10:01.

*facepalm*

Meanwhile, as we were going to the lab, my mother asked me to make sure I stayed to watch while her blood was being drawn. I asked why, as I’m always there, and she basically said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It took a few hours to drag out why she was asking, but the last time we went (In May, because the June one got missed when she got verbally abusive and I walked out), she said I had left to do my own thing – she was very accusatory about it – which I couldn’t remember at the time. While I was not there, she basically thinks the guy faked drawing her blood. She wanted me to be there today to watch and make sure he really did take her blood. Except it was a different person drawing the blood this time.

I brought up the telephone doctor’s appointment after the lab work was done, and she said there wasn’t one. So I brought up my calendar for May. There was my appointment to take her to the lab, then a week later, her follow up telephone appointment with the doctor. Which I remember, because there was nothing of concern with the results, so her assistant called and talked to us, instead. After the call was done, my mother’s comment was, so… the doctor didn’t want to talk to me…

My mother doesn’t remember that call.

I was flummoxed by my mother saying I had left her, but I did finally remember, after I got home. There was a time I’d taken her in, and I had my own requisitions for blood work and an EKG to be done. I wasn’t able to do the blook work, as it needed to be fasting, but I did get the EKG done. So that’s when she would have had her blood drawn while I wasn’t there. I was in another room, getting wired up.

So my mother believes the home care aids are not showing up to do her meds on purpose (she says they want her to die), and she thinks the tech that took her blood last time, faked taking her blood.

It was a very strange day with her, this time!

I had expected to do her grocery shopping after this was done, but she told me she didn’t need one. I asked more specifically about things and ended up getting her a few little things she was running out of. When I got back with the groceries, she had an envelope ready for me to make that had a prepaid envelop. She asked me to mail it for me, and insisted I take it in person, not just drop it in the mail box. The mail box apparently got stolen or vandalized once, some 10 years ago, so she refuses to use it.

By the time I left my mother’s it was just past 11.

It felt like it should have been much later!

She had her Meals on Wheels coming soon, so I left her to that.

Once home, the heat was really kicking in, and I had lots to do when it cooled down, so I did try to take a nap, after updating my siblings about the visit with my mother. I called the home care coordinator and left a message about some of the stuff, but she didn’t call back today. My daughter reminded me that I’ve been wanting to book an appointment with my doctor for this month, instead of next month, and requested a tandem appointment. She now has her own follow up to do, regarding her referral for a reduction mammoplasty. So we are now both booked in the middle of the month.

I have a field of vision test right after that, but I think I’ll have to reschedule. My daughter would have to drive me home, since they’ll have to dilate my eyes. That’ll be less than two weeks from her ganglion eviction, and she might not quite be up to driving quite yet.

Meanwhile, my husband has his first physio appointment at the new pain clinic tomorrow.

July is working out to be a very busy month for medical stuff!

Anyhow.

I am happy to day I did succeed in getting a nap in – I ended up sleeping almost 4 hours! The heat is really draining the energy out of me.

I did, however, get lots done in the garden this evening, once things started cooling down!

That will get it’s own post – or more, though 😊

The Re-Farmer

Birds, gardens, kittens and pain

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Things were definitely all over the place today!

I was out doing my morning rounds pretty early. That’s always disorienting. By the time I’m done and settling it, I feel like it should be 2 or 3 in the afternoon, only to find it isn’t even 9 in the morning yet!

Our permanent trellis may only have the vertical posts so far, but it’s already being appreciated by birds.

I zoomed in with my phone’s camera, before getting closer and startling it away, so the image quality is not very good. It’s still enough to see that this is a type of bird I don’t recognize at all. Pretty, whatever it was, and it enjoyed a nice little rest on top of one of the trellis posts.

I also got a tiny harvest in this morning. I picked what is probably the last of our garlic scapes.

You can see one is starting to split a bit; the consequence of not harvesting for a couple of days. The scape was starting to straighten out again, and getting ready to form bulbils. I didn’t notice it when I finally did a larger harvest of scapes, yesterday, thinking the straighter stem meant it was too early to pick, rather than getting almost too late to pick! That’s okay. It’ll still taste good!

As I was getting ready to head inside, I managed to get this adorable picture of Havarti.

He’s more feral than the other kittens but is starting to clue in that when I pick him up and carry him, it usually means I’m putting him next to a bowl of kitten food. We make a sort of cat soup for the littles, but some of the adult cats have discovered it and can get pretty aggressive about eating it before the littles have a chance!

Havarti’s two siblings are still missing. Every day we don’t see them, the more convinced I am that, wherever Caramel took them, they have not survived. She is always here, and I sometimes see her in one of the cat beds in the water bowl shelter, covered in kittens and napping. This is not the behaviour of a mama cat with babies in another location.

I managed to get a picture of Captain Hastings this evening.

Poirot has been diligent in keeping her babies close to the sun room, and we’ve often seen her picking up Inspector Japp and carrying him back to the house if he goes too far! Hastings and Miss Lemon tend to stay closer, though.

It looks like Hastings will be another blue eyed beauty!

I just got back from chasing a racoon and a skunk out of the sun room. I found Caramel in the water bowl house, snuggled with Havarti. She definitely is down to one kitten.

This time of year is normally when the more feral cats are starting to wean their kittens, bringing them to the house where there is reliable food, water and shelter.

That isn’t happening.

Just now, I saw Slick – aka: Octomom, as she had a litter of 8, two years ago. She was one of the pregnant ones that would come close to the house for food, but we couldn’t otherwise get close to. She is one of three ferals, for sure, that were definitely pregnant and suddenly were looking skinny again.

Slick is looking pregnant again.

Which means, she lost a litter.

As for the other two ferals, I haven’t seen any sign of kittens with them, either. At least neither of them are looking pregnant, though!

I don’t quite know what to make of it. I suppose I should be glad I’m not finding remains to bury, as happened so often last year, but it does make me wonder.

Oh, there is another possibility.

The nearest farm to ours that has someone living there full time is our vandal, and I know they care for a colony, too. I can see on our trail cams that some of our cats head in that direction, too.

Perhaps they had babies, but took them to our vandal’s place, instead?

It’s possible, I suppose. Not likely, but possible!

Anyhow.

When I first headed out this morning to get the food ready for the outside cats, I realized something.

There was a cat stuck in the old kitchen all night!

The old kitchen is our “buffer zone” between the house and the sun room. It’s sort of tacked on to the original log portion of the house. When heading out or in, we make sure to close the doors. That way, the inside cats don’t end up outside, and outside cats don’t end up inside, but if they do get through, they’ll only get as far as the old kitchen.

The problem is, the door from the main part of the house to the old kitchen is an antique door. I love it, but it doesn’t always close properly. Sometimes, I’ll be convinced it’s closed, but when I open the first door to the sun room, the air pressure change pushes open the door into the house.

Well, I guess something like that happened during yesterday’s evening feeding. My daughter was helping me and, as she started back into the house from the sun room, she discovered a whole bunch of inside cats in the old kitchen!

We thought we got them all out.

Unfortunately, the old kitchen has been used for storing things temporarily. One corner was full of cardboard set aside all winter, to be used in the garden. It is also where we put our garbage bags until we can go to the dump. Which we haven’t been able to do properly, since the box cover was blown off the truck. Without a cover, there are too many lighter bags that would end up blown into the ditches. Between that and things coming up to prevent us from getting to the dump, we have way too many bags of garbage in the old kitchen. With those, the cardboard, the furniture, chest freezer and old wood burning cook stove, there are a LOT of places a cat can hide.

This morning, while getting the kibble ready, I started hearing meowing, but couldn’t see anything. My daughter came to help with the cat feeding, and she couldn’t see anything either. Once the outside cats were fed, she and I started passing things out of the old kitchen, mostly through the door with the missing screen (which has been SO handy!), to clear space. A few garbage bags, stuff for the burn barrel we can’t burn because we’re under a fire ban still, and all the carboard I was setting aside for the garden.

The old kitchen feels down right huge, now!

Still no sign of a cat.

We did eventually track the meowing to coming from under a dresser. My daughter ended up removing its 2 drawers completely, only for the cat to run out and under the couch. We did figure out it was Tiny. No wonder we didn’t realize she was missing. She is one for hiding away on top of the closet in the entry, or other secret places, because some of the other cats bully her.

So I continued my morning rounds while my daughter made sure to unlock the other door, so I wouldn’t have to go through the sun room and potentially scare a cat into hiding again.

By the time I finished and was back inside, I found my younger daughter on her knees, trying to persuade a cat out from under the couch. Her sister had already left a bowl with the contents of a squeeze treat in it, but the bait wasn’t enough.

My daughter did find a way to get Tiny to come out voluntarily, though.

A tin of wet cat food, and David.

Tiny loves David. The two of them get along incredibly well.

My daughter put a bowl of wet cat food in the middle of the floor, then brought David in, leaving the door from the house into the old kitchen open, standing guard to make sure none of the other cats went in.

Tiny saw David and immediately came out.

She saw the food bowl he was at and ran over to eat.

She saw the open door and ran into the house!

I strongly suspect Tiny is not going to sneak into the old kitchen again. At least not for a very long time!

Very glad my daughter was able to take care of that!

Meanwhile, my husband had his appointment at the new pain clinic today. I was finished my morning rounds so early, I was actually able to try and lie down and close my eyes for a couple of hours, before trying to drive.

My husband also tried to go back to sleep. He had a horrible night last night. Ozempic side effects. He’s been on it for years and they keep increasing the dose. I don’t know why he’s still on it. It is not working. Oh, and the weight loss side effect everyone is being prescribed it for these days? He has lost zero weight, but he HAS lost muscle mass. Which is the “weight loss” of Ozempic, though in his case, the number of the scale hasn’t changed in years. One of the other side effects, however, has sometimes been a problem. That particular side effect had my husband taking a shower and doing laundry at 2am.

Nasty stuff. I can’t understand why anyone would take it, if they weren’t diabetic – and even then, I don’t think it’s worth it!

Neither of us managed to get much sleep before it was time to start heading out. I had deliberately made a point of resting my injured left arm as much as I could yesterday, so that I would be okay for driving.

I forgot something.

The broken handle inside the driver’s side door. The one that requires opening the window and twisting my left arm around to open the door from the outside.

*sigh*

After moving the truck closer to the house for my husband, I had to give it a go, and it was way more painful than it should have been. I was still okay to get his walker out of the entry and down the concrete steps so my husband could use it to walk the rest of the way to the house. He used a cane to go through the old kitchen and sun room, to avoid the steps he’d have to taken using the main entry.

In working with his walker, however, we discovered a problem.

It’s been a long time since my husband has had to go anywhere, so his walker has been in the entry for a while.

The cats climb it, of course.

Well, one or more of them decided to pee on the cushioned seat, even though the walker was folded up. While getting it in an out of the truck, folding and unfolding it, we realized it was even still wet.

Once at the hospital, we were directed to the new pain clinic, which happens to be sharing the same area as the outpatient clinic my daughter will be going to for her surgery. We went through the registration process and my husband settled down to wait. Typically, to take pressure off his back, he will sit in a chair and lean forward onto his walker, stretching his back out.

The smell of cat pee was so bad, he took his cane out of the holder and asked me to put the walker back in the truck.

!!!

When I got back, he was already taken to see the first pain clinic specialist. This guy turned out to be a physiotherapist. My husband had a questionnaire to fill out, along with a list of his medications, and send in some time ago. They were going over that first. We went over the many things attempted before we moved, and how things went at the city pain clinic in this province he managed to get to (that was a waste of 2 years on a waiting list!) in 2020.

After going over all that, he left to consult with the doctor, who then came to get us for the second part of the appointment.

The doctor was looking at the husband’s CT scans from November, and we appreciated that he was honest with us.

There really isn’t anything they can do for him.

Which is pretty much what my husband expected to hear.

Everything that could be tried, has been tried. He’s on the medications. He’s had the various treatments. In the end there were just two things they could offer. One was information about scheduled workshops they have available online, though in person is also a possibility, for those who are able. They cover a variety of things to help cope with and live with chronic pain. My husband has been living with is for so long, he’s probably tried or has been doing them already. Still, there might be something he hasn’t tried, yet.

The other is physiotherapy.

My husband did the physio route pretty much from the start. It kept him going for a long time, and he even started to get better. He started out seeing a physiotherapist three times a week. She got him down to once a week. He was still able to work at this time, too.

The insurance covers physio 100%, but with an upper limit, so once that limit was reached, my husband had to stop physio until the fiscal year started again. Without the equipment used on him, his condition deteriorated during that break, but then he started up again and things started to improve.

Then the physiotherapist was lured away by a rugby team. The therapist that replaced her was… not as good.

There was much more going on that affected his condition as well that I won’t get into here, but it wasn’t much longer before my husband couldn’t work anymore and went onto disability. Then we ended up here, on the farm I grew up on, in a province where some of the specialists that had been helping my husband before don’t even exist.

Anyhow. That’s what we both thought of, when physiotherapy was brought up. There’s no way my husband can handle driving all that way, multiple times a week. Even when he got a prescription for physio with the first doctor he had after our move, and he could have gone to a closer therapist, it just didn’t happen. With only, at best, 10 sessions covered by insurance, why even bother? Of course now, we couldn’t afford the gas, either.

Well, it turns out they can try something different.

Physio, done at the pain clinic, is covered by our medicare system, for starters. It would also be just once a month, with my husband being given a regimen he can do at home until the next session, when things can be adjusted as needed.

Once a month with a 45-50 minute drive one way, my husband can do.

We are now booked with the first guy we saw today, next week!

Beyond that, however, there really isn’t anything that can be done about my husband’s condition. His doctor is going to get a report, and she can take it from there again.

That done, my husband and I headed out. As difficult as it was for him with just a can and not his walker, it was lunch time, and he wanted McDonalds. 😄 It’s probably been more than a year since he’s been to one. So we went to the nearby Walmart and had lunch, then I left him to enjoy the fries he had been craving to do a bit of shopping. My first city shopping trip is in just a couple of days, but we were going to run out of cat food before then.

During the drive home, we actually drove through some rain! Not a lot. We still need much more! Thankfully, the kibble I got that was in the box of the truck came in plastic bags, not paper, so the rain wasn’t an issue.

We kept the girls updated the whole time, so when we got home, my daughter had the gate open for us, and was able to help me bring things inside. As careful as I was, my arm was really throbbing by then.

Oh, I discovered two things while taking my husband’s walker to the truck.

One, I really, really like using a walker.

Two, my right arm hasn’t completely escaped damage. While leaning on the walker’s hand bars, my left arm was actually quite a bit better than when my daughter brought it out to help me get back to the house after my fall. My right arm, however, seems to still have some damage to a triceps. Nothing I notice unless I am pushing down on something, though.

Once everything was inside and taken care of, my daughter took care of my husband’s walker. She took it outside and scrubbed the whole thing down, top to bottom, hosed it down, then took the carpet and furniture shampooer to it. That thing looks brand new, now!

It’s also now stored in the old kitchen, where the cats can’t get at it!

Unless they sneak in and hide overnight, like Tiny did!

With all this, my husband is completely worn out and drained, and in so much pain. Hopefully, he’ll be able to actual sleep tonight, and not end up feeling sick again.

As for me, I’m happy to say the arm is doing better. I was able to get a bit done outside this evening. I went over the pink rose bush again, looking for any scale insects I missed. There were a few! I treated it with another soapy water spray, too. It’s only been a day, but I think the rose bush is already looking less droopy than it was, yesterday! We only have the one pink rose bush, so I would hate to lose it.

While checking on the rest of the garden, I noticed insects on the winter squash again – possibly thrips. They got the soapy water treatment, too. The winter squash are trying to bloom like crazy, but the plants are not looking very healthy at all. The transplants were very strong and healthy, so this is disappointing.

So, that has been our day today! It’s been a wonderfully cool and, at times, rainy day today. The only downside is, our overnight low is currently expected to drop to 6C/43F tonight – which is actually an improvement! This morning, they were saying we might drop to 4C/39F. With temperatures that low, I’d be looking to cover some of the garden beds to prevent cold damage! Meanwhile, the 10 day forecast has us looking at temperatures approaching 30C/68F, soon.

Good grief. It’s hard to believe we’re almost at July already.

Oh! I forgot one bit of good news!

We got a call from the door guy at the hardware store I went to last week. We now have an appointment for three days from now. He’s going to check out the damage, take the measurements he needs, and we’ll start talking what options we have, and how much it’ll cost.

I know it’s going to be painfully expensive… well… everything is painfully expensive right now. However, once that door and frame is fixed, it’s going to be really nice to not have frost showing up on the bottom of the door every winter!

So I’m both dreading and anticipating getting that door fix.

What to do with the cats while the work is being done is a problem we’ll have to figure out when the time comes!

😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Getting stuff done, and birthday take out

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The cats had me up ridiculously early this morning. I ended up just doing the outside cat feeding and going back to bed, instead of doing my full morning rounds. Thankfully, I did actually get some real sleep the second time around, even if it meant having Butterscotch basically lying on my head. She seems to associate my being in bed as “it’s safe now”, and she’ll come out of hiding from under the armchair and start demanding attention before curling up and sleeping right against my head and neck.

My daughter’s appointment at the hospital wasn’t until 4:40, and we were planning to be on the road by 3:30, so I did have some time in the afternoon to get the weed trimmer out and start clearing around the house. We were way behind on that in some areas, particularly around the portable greenhouse. I had just a bit left to do around the north side when the weed trimmer simply stopped. Usually, when that happens, it means the plug in the handle had come loose, but that was fine. I checked all down the extension cords (I need three 300′ cords to be able to reach everything), but everything was fine. So I messaged my daughters asking if one of them could check the breakers, but none were tripped.

We might be down a weed trimmer.

I’m hoping it was just over worked and will start again when I test it tomorrow. By the time we confirmed it was not the breakers, I had to put everything away, so I could clean up and change before we had to leave.

I did remember to prepare the cat soup variation for the kittens, and had it all ready for my older daughter to take care of while we were gone. The kibble mixed in with the canned cat food and warm water would have had plenty of time to get nice and soft by then.

One of the things I started before the weed trimming was replace the hose end with the pin prick hole in it with one of the new couplings I picked up. It was definitely the quickest and easiest fix I’ve ever had! No screw clamps on these things. It took me a while to understand how the rest worked, though. It just didn’t make sense to me, but the shut off valve is basically just pulling the female coupling part right off. That can be screwed into the end of another hose, or into a nozzle, then popped back in place for the water to start flowing. Which works well enough, except that I was attaching this to a soaker hose. Then, after about an hour, to a different soaker hose in another bed. The hoses are different brands and their mail couplings are designed slightly differently. One is a lot deeper than the other, and both were difficult to screw onto the new coupling’s end properly. It’s really designed to work with the same brand’s matching male couplings, not regular hose ends. I haven’t tried it with a sprayer nozzle, yet. One of the sprinkler hose connections leaked a fair bit, but I just move it so it would lean into the mulch near one of the plant collars in the bed that was being waters.

It might actually be worth replacing the other hose ends with this new type I got. A lot of the ones with screw clamps on them either still leak, or they are hard to attach and detach, because the screw clamps are in the way.

Anyhow. Just the two beds got watered, so I’m going to have to make sure to do a full watering of everything else, tomorrow morning. We’re expected to reach a high of 23C/73F tomorrow, then a high of 26C/79F the day after, so everything is going to need it!

My daughter had a questionnaire they’d sent to her all filled out to bring along for her appointment. It was close enough to her appointment time that I dropped her off at the doors before finding a parking spot. When I caught up with her, there was absolutely no one else in the waiting room, so she got called in right on time.

The first person (a nurse?) took her sheet with the questions, but the only reason they went through them at all was because my daughter hadn’t quite understood some of their questions, and hadn’t answered them. After a little while, she was taken to see the surgeon that will be operating on her wrist.

Most of what they asked was, in a nutshell, are you really sure you want to do this? Is it really so bad you’re willing to go under anesthetic and have someone digging around in your wrist? The surgeon was, at first, careful with how he phrased things but, after hearing how my daughter answered, realized he could go right into gruesome detail without any issue. So my daughter got a very intense description of what the surgery will entail, and was she really sure it was bad enough to go through this?

It makes me wonder just what sort of things they had to deal with in the past, to make them have to asked some of these questions!

My daughter, meanwhile, was more than happy to accept the surgery. Her ganglion happens to be on the small side right now, but when it gets bad, it gets really bad. The pain gets extreme and renders her arm pretty much useless.

She left with a printout with pre-op instructions. We have a date for the surgery, but she’ll get a call in about a week for the exact time she needs to come in. It’s just day surgery, so I’ll be driving her in, then hanging around to take her home.

We’re pretty impressed that she’s getting her surgery so relatively quickly. The referral was sent in April. To get such a quick surgery date for what is classified as elective surgery so quickly is very rare. She’s still waiting on other referrals her doctor had sent out for her.

Once she was done, I asked if there was anything we needed to do, while we were in town. After messaging with her sister for a bit, it was decided that we would go to a Pizza Hut – her choice for her special birthday take out (it’s not her birthday yet, but we split things like this up throughout the birth month, instead) – courtesy of her sister. We ended up getting four large stuffed crust pizzas, plus two 22 count boneless wings with different sauces.

That cost my daughter over $200 – and that was before the tip was added!

It’ll feed us for several days, though!

The ride home sure smelled good, though – and we were both quite hungry by then!

I may not have done my full morning rounds, but I did do my evening rounds. I’m concerned about a lot of my transplants. All of the transplants in the main garden area, and even in the east garden beds, are looking strangely yellow and floppy. The eggplant, peppers and herbs transplanted into the old kitchen garden seem fine, but all the other transplants are looking like they are dying. This doesn’t look like transplant shock, either. I don’t know what to make of it, but at this point, I’m not sure any of the melons or winter squash will survive! I’ve tried looking up the possible causes, and the only thing that seems likely is lack of nitrogen.

I did get some water soluble fertilizer while in town recently, so I think I’ll be making use of that when I do the watering tomorrow!

Other things are looking just fine. Like the raspberries that have spread into the old compost pile.

Turn your volume up for these videos.

You can’t see very many, but the raspberry bushes were absolutely buzzing with mostly bumblebees. There is one huge bumble in the second video. You can even hear the much deeper tone of that one’s buzzing!

These raspberries have had zero tending to, other than my pulling some of the weeds around the edges. No watering or anything. They’re doing fantastic, though!

On a completely note, here is some adorableness for you.

I’m actually not 100% sure which cats these are, but I think it’s Mitsy and Toni all snuggled together. The cats just love this box! It’s a compromise with the cats, to allow them on the dining table; we used to allow only Ginger and Toni up there, as a safe space to get away from the other cats. When we started to find them snuggling with other cats, it just didn’t make sent to chase the 4 legged cats away from the 3 legged ones! Now, we’ll go past the box and sometimes find three large cats mashed into the box, literally hugging each other to fit. They keep moving when we stop to try and get a picture, though.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, we’ll be able to make a dump run, and my daughter plans to break out the riding mower. I do hope I can get that weed trimmer going again, as there are still areas that need to be done. Particularly around garden beds I need to work on. If not, I might be able to borrow my brother’s gas powered weed trimmer. I’m hoping they’ll be able to come out this weekend. The last couple of times they came out, I missed them entirely, and I’d love to do some catching up with them, too.

We shall see!

For now, I’m happy with what I managed to get done outside today, in the short time I had available for it, and that we got my daughter’s surgery consultation appointment done. It seems strange to be excited about getting surgery, but that ganglion has been causing her so much pain, it’s going to make a huge difference for her, once it’s gone!

I’m so glad we found this doctor and my daughter is finally getting this stuff done!

The Re-Farmer

That worked out unexpectedly well!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness!

I just got back home again and spotted Poirot in with her babies, and had to pause for this.

I actually couldn’t see the little black one until viewing these files on my desktop! The little voidling disappears into the void of his mother’s fur. 😁

Last night, I remembered that we hadn’t done my mother’s monthly blook work yet, and that she had a fasting blood test to do as well. I made arrangements with her to come over this morning, aiming to get her to the lab, which is just a few blocks from her place, as early as possible, so she wouldn’t have to keep fasting for so long.

I ended up having a ridiculously early morning. I’ve been waking up as the days get light, which means I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier for a while now! This morning, it was about 5:30am, and I didn’t need to get up until later. While in the washroom, though, I heard suspect kitten noises, so I got a daughter to join me to check on them while feeding them. It’s much easier to get wet cat food to the kittens with a second person! I still had to close up the inner door on the sun room to let the babies have a chance to eat. Poirot and Brussel had left when I started dispensing the kibble, with Poirot heading off somewhere in the outer yard. Caramel’s kittens were in the cat house, of course, so I tucked their tray into the entry, hoping they would find it and eat before the other cats discovered it. I have noticed that the other adult cats don’t go into the cat house at all, now that the babies are in there, which is good.

By the time I finished my rounds, Poirot was back and at the sun room door, wanting in but too scared to let me come close and open it for her. It doesn’t actually close all the way; things have shifted too much over the winter. It jams onto the threshold enough to stay closed, but if a cat were to push against it, it opens – something some of the other cats have already figured out!

I headed out to my mother’s for about 8:30am. As I parked and headed in, I saw someone leaving and immediately thought it was probably the health care worker. Sure enough, I was right; I had just missed her. My mother remembered not to have breakfast with her pills, which was good. She was all dressed and ready to go, too… including a grocery list! Which I was happy to see, as I forgot to suggest I could do her grocery shopping while I was there. We had time to go over her list and the new flier. Whole chicken was on an excellent sale and she was okay with getting one, which made me happy. She is not getting enough protein, and we all need more protein as we get older.

That done, we headed to the lab in the hospital. She was the only one there, so they were able to take her in and get it done very quickly. So quickly, she actually complained as I was helping her out of the chair, that everyone is in such a hurry! The technician didn’t actually hurry, but was efficient in doing a very basic blood draw, but for someone who struggles just to get in and out of their slightly higher chair, I’m sure it feels way too fast!

Since she was out and about, and in need of breakfast, I suggested we try out the newly renovated and re-opened restaurant that she’s been wanting to go to for some time. Even when they were still closed and very much under renovation, she tried to get me to stop and go inside to see if they were open yet. 😄 I drove past it on the way to her place, so I knew it was open for breakfast. She happily agreed, but was then surprised when I drove to the highway. She wanted to go to the “new” restaurant, and this building has been there for a long time.

???

She then told me her neighbours were talking about a new restaurant. This was the only one that I knew about.

With the new renovations, this place now has a wheelchair ramp, but no automatic doors, which I found a bit odd. If I had not been there with her, my mother would have had a very hard time getting in on her own. They are clearly not completely finished with their plans, with dining tables in only one half of the space. Tables spaced nice and far apart, with plenty of room for someone to get through with a walker, even if there were people sitting in the chairs. At this time, though, there was only one occupied table.

We had a basic eggs, hashbrowns, meat (I had sausage, my mother had bacon) and toast breakfast. It was quite good, and the portions generous. Given that my mother was literally breaking her fast, she was quite hungry, so that worked out very well.

More people came in while we were eating and, my mother being my mother, she started talking to people at the other tables. As I was coming back from paying the bill, I caught the tail end of someone explain to Mom about the new restaurant she had been hearing about. It turns out it was more like a canteen in the rec centre that is only open a few days a week. No wonder I hadn’t heard about it!

Once we were done there, I took my mother home, since she was clearly getting pretty tired. When we got to her door, though, we found something in front of it.

A reusable grocery bag with a card in an envelop sticking out of it.

My immediate thought went to our vandal, while my mother started listing off all sorts of other possibilities.

I was right. Our vandal and come by and, with my mother away, had left things at the door for her.

My mother was so tired, she settled into her chair without pausing to take her jacket off. The bag turned out to have four mini fruit pies in it. I opened the card for her, too. It was a mother’s day card, and she was quite delighted by the chickadees pictures on the front. I opened it up and there was a note written inside from our vandal. It was from both him and his wife, though clearly his handwriting. The note was a brief mention about something his “cancer counsellor” told him. It was unusually benign, which suggests to me his wife actually saw and knew about the card, though it still reeked of manipulation. Other cards and letters he has left with her were typically quite nasty.

My mother was too enamored by the pretty chickadees to notice or care.

Once she was settled and comfortable, I headed out with her shopping list. I also needed to go to the post office, which is almost directly across the street from the grocery store, so I parked at the grocery store, then grabbed the envelopes to walk across and mail them, first.

I immediately noticed a very familiar looking vehicle.

While I was getting the envelopes out, I saw our vandal getting into it. My mother and I must have just missed him at her place by minutes!

As I walked across to the post office, he left the parking lot and I was concerned that he might have seen and recognized me, and would decide to go back to my mother’s again. So I got things mailed and did the shopping quickly. Not that it would have taken long, anyhow; my mother’s shopping lists are not long.

When I got back to my mother’s place with her shopping, the first thing I asked was if everything was okay. She was surprised to see me back so quickly – she hasn’t even taken her jacket off, yet! I explained to her about seeing our vandal and that I was concerned he would come back, if he’d seen me.

Then we promptly forgot all about him.

After the groceries were put away, I stayed longer to do a bit of housekeeping for her. There wasn’t much she needed done, so I was soon on my way home.

It was actually quite disorienting to realize it was not even 11:30 when I left.

By this time, things were starting to get quite hot, and the high winds were in full force. Our expected high of 27C/81F has been dropped to 25C/77F, which we are at right now and are expected to stay at for several more hours.

When I got home, I had to check on the raised bed covers, and they are all holding up to the wind. The portable greenhouse, however, is not doing as well. We had to tie the door open, as it was over 50C/122F in there. The door faces the house, and the wind is from the south, so at least the doorway is sheltered, but plastic covering the frame is still ballooning. At some point, the ties for the door came loose, so it was flapping. My husband’s window faces it, so he was able to let us know and my daughter fixed it. She ended up draping a broken hose over it, and pushed the cat trap right against one side of it, to try and reduce the ballooning. That actually helped quite a bit. Unfortunately, the plastic around the doorway is starting to tear. Where it’s attached to the zipper already had some tears, and that’s gotten much worse, but even at one corner, where the tie down loop is, has started to tear.

*sigh*

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but I really was hoping it would hold out longer. At least the roof and three sides are still holding out. It’s just the side with the doorway. We’ll still be able to make it work out.

It’s getting time to feed the outside cats for the evening, so I’ll be heading outside to check on things soon. With this wind and heat, though, there is no way I’ll be able to continue clearing out the garden bed I started on, yesterday. The high winds are supposed to continue through the night, but tomorrow is supposed to be cooler (as in, just under 20C/68C) and the winds are supposed to die down by then, so I should be able to finish clearing that bed then. I have decided that I will plant peas down the middle of this bed, and potatoes on either side. Once the bed is clear, I will set up posts to hold trellis netting down the middle, then get netting on it right away, so that’s over and done with, before planting anything. If things go smoothly, I should be able to get the peas and potatoes planted by the end of the day.

If things go smoothly.

I don’t really count on that. 😄

Now to go feed some kitties and check for wind damage!

The Re-Farmer

Baby moving day and a visit to the doctor

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, and update on Poirot and her babies.

We tried getting her to move into the cat cage. The babies were tucked into the cat cave, for darkness and warmth. We watched and could tell that she knew where they were, and I kept an eye on the critter cam. My older daughter, who works at night, checked as well, though there was no way to see if a black cat was in the darkness of the cat cave.

When I came out to do the morning feeding (waaayyy to early for me!), I took a peak and could see the babies. I pet them, mostly to make sure they were actually alive, and they immediately started crying for mama.

My daughter helped me with putting the food out, with me setting the dry kibble out first, to distract the other cats, while she split up a couple of cans of wet cat food for the babies, then passed them to me. I made sure to put some wet cat food inside the cat cage, but could not see Poirot anywhere.

So I continued my morning rounds and, while coming back from switching out memory cards at the gate cam, I spotted a whole bunch of cats following from a distance on the driveway.

Including Poirot.

I continued me rounds, hoping she would go to her babies in the sun room but, as I finished up, she was still outside. She just would not go to them.

So I decided to take the cat cave, babies still inside, and moved it back to the water bowl shelter, where she seemed to be hanging out the most. I even put some wet cat food inside the cat cave.

She did come over and stick her head in to eat, but would not go inside.

I hung around behind the cat house, watching her, but she just jumped onto the roof to eat, then back down again. I could hear her kittens crying, and she would stick her head in, but not go in all the way. Which you can see in the first image below.

Okay, so she doesn’t like the cat cave. I decided to take them out and put them on the cat bed she gave birth in, that was right beside it.

I then headed into the sun room and stood by the old kitchen door, messaging the family to update them.

Which is when Poirot suddenly ran into the sun room.

With something black in her mouth.

Her black kitten.

I froze and watched through the sides of my eyes so as not to scare her out. She brought the kitten to the set up just behind me, only to drop it. She tried again and dropped it again.

The way we have things set up in that area, we have a couple of plant stands of different heights in front of the mini greenhouse frame that is now used only by the cats. These are against one of the shelves that supports the platform, and where we store several open cat carriers for the cats to be comfortable and familiar with them. At the moment, there is one on the bottom shelf, and the cats keep pushing the door closed – not latched, but it doesn’t swing open on its own. There had been one the next shelf up, but we had to use it and it is now sitting directly on the floor, opposite the cat cage. I even toss a bit of kibble inside so the cats are comfortable going in and out of it. Then there is a cat carrier on the third shelf up, which is the shelf that supports the platform at that end. Because of the platform, it’s turned sideways, so the open doorway faces the top of the mini greenhouse.

That’s where we found the black kitten, yesterday evening. It has a cat blanket inside that the cats have managed to not drag out and onto the floor, like the other ones.

It was clear to me that Poirot was wanting to get to that carrier. After dropping her kitten yet again, it started crying loudly, so I took a chance. As soon as I moved, she backed away from her kitten, but not very far. I picked it up and put it into the carrier.

She immediately jumped up the shelves, into the carrier, and settled to nurse and groom her kitten.

At that point, I decided to give in. I went and got her other two kittens and brought them over. As I came close, she started hissing at me, but immediately stopped when I put a kitten in, and was grooming it before I could put the last one in. The kittens immediately went hunting for nip.

I then went and got some for the remaining wet cat food intended for her and put it in close enough that she could eat while her kittens continued to nurse. I then hung around and found things to do until I could see she had mostly finished eating.

I then went and got the last squeeze treat for her. She once again started hissing at me when I got close, but then she discovered the treat, and she started eating it. As with Brussel, once the tube it too empty to comfortably squeeze with one hand (I have to use my other hang to hang on to something, since I’m having to lean forward so much to reach the mama), I pulled it back, then squeezed the last of the treat out of the tube and onto my finger and thumb, then reached in again to let her lick the last of it off my fingers.

Which she did, without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Brussel was sitting in her spot by her kittens, under the platform, watching me. I had developed a routine of giving her a squeeze treat before going into the house, but I had none left. We did still have other donated treats; they look a bit like squares of chocolate. I opened a couple of them and broke them into their little squares. There was enough for me to scatter some for Brussel and her kittens, Poirot in her cat carrier, then around the kibble trays for any other cats that happened to still be around.

If you scroll through the Instagram post, you’ll see a video of a very happy Poirot.

The problem is, if the kittens ever squirm their way out of the carrier, which would not take much to do, there is a very real chance they’d fall to the concrete floor below. The girls and I are doing to use some of the cardboard I’ve set aside for the garden and sort of box the area in, so if they do get out, they’ll just be on cardboard, and there will be no gaps for them to fall through.

Poirot definitely won this battle! It would be safer for her to be in the cat cage and, especially, in the warmth of the cat cave, but being in a carrier is hardly a bad thing. I tried calling the rescue in the city the Cat Lady recommended to me, but there was no answer and no option to leave a message. If we can get through to them and they are in a position to taken in a mama and kittens, it will be much easier to do that with them already in a carrier!

So that was my morning adventure!

Once back inside and breakfasted up, it was still quite early, so I took advantage of it to lie down for about an hour. I’d say “take a nap”, but my phone’s notifications kept going off, so not much sleep was to be had.

My daughter’s appointment with the doctor was at 1:30, and we needed to be on the road by 12:30. We ended up leaving shortly after noon, instead, which gave me time to swing by the feed store in my mother’s town and pick up a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats.

Which I have forgotten in the truck… 😄

That done, we continued to our appointments. We were early, but not early enough to have lunch, first, so we just went in and waited. My appointment was at 2, and we both got called in about half an hour late.

The primary thing for both of us was to take care of the disability paperwork the doctor asked us to bring in. We’d already filled out our portions. For me, it was all about my osteoarthritis, which she listed as severe. At one point, I told her that it’s really hard for me to even think of being disabled. I mean, it’s just arthritis, right? Everyone gets arthritis, eventually (meaning OA, of course, not rheumatoid), right? Everyone gets sort feet, right? She just started laughing and shaking her head.

The forms ask about things like being able to walk and needing to use mobility aids (I did have to use a cane, just yesterday evening, which I haven’t needed to do in quite a while), and she listed canes, arm bars, hand rails and the bath chair, as well as sometimes needing to have someone else prepare food for me. What the paperwork doesn’t have a space for it specifically about hands. Just walking. While my walking is affected, my hands are really the more of an issue for me, as I have trouble turning door nobs, or being able to do things like hold a cup.

Which reminds me. We’re going to need to replace the door knob on our bathroom door with a lever style handle, sooner rather than later. As we were talking and she was filling in different parts of the form, I mentioned that I was diagnosed back in 2000, and was already using a cane before then, and she went back and added that in, too. I had checked off the box giving the okay to get retroactive disability payments, but I really don’t think that’ll happen all the way back to 2000!

Now, I fully expect us to both get rejected immediately. That happened with my husband. When he took the letter of rejection to his doctor, the doctor told him they always reject the first application. Just send it in again. Which we did, and my husband’s application was accepted the second time. Now, that was back in…. 2014? 2025? Somewhere around there. So we’ll see if that’s still the case. After the paperwork got the appropriate clinic stamp and scanned for our files, we got them back – after paying $50 each – and will need to mail them out ASAP.

Beyond that, we went over various things and talked about my meds. I’ve been bumped up from T2s to T3s.

I mentioned how I’ve started getting Charlie Horses again, now that I’m active outside more. I’m already taking the supplements that would help, and she suggested I add squats to my regimen. This would actually be quite difficult for me, since my knees are shot. My legs are already over developed, since muscle is the thing keeping them from bending in directions they are not designed to do, but doing squats (and stretches, but I am already doing that) should also help. Talking about it with my daughter, later, I’m not entirely sure how I would do them. My knees are simply not stable enough. We do have an exercise bike, so that might work, too. I will try doing squats, too, though. As long as I’ve got something I can grab on to for support, I might be okay.

Meanwhile, the doctor says she doesn’t need to see me for a follow up for 3 months, and wrote me up to get bloodwork done just before then. My daughter had more bloodwork done after her appointment, so she’s booked to come back next month.

We both had changes in prescriptions, so we messaged my husband to call the pharmacy and let them know to fill the faxes they would get, as we were on the way. This gave him a chance to add anything he needed for himself, but there wasn’t anything this time.

By the time we got to the pharmacy, it was letting late in the afternoon, and neither of us had had lunch. So we ended up getting some take out before heading home. It was late enough that I left my daughter to take things in and split up the food while I went out to do the evening cat feeding.

Poirot was still curled up with her babies in the cat carrier. She did growl a bit at me, until I put the food bowl down in front of her, just outside the carrier. Hopefully, we will have better luck at socializing her than we’ve had with Brussel. For all that she now expects to get the wet cat food and the treats, she still growls and attacks my hands. Aside from a couple of times I took advantage of proximity and managed to pet her, she does not like it when we get within reach, if it doesn’t involve food!

The bigger kittens, meanwhile, are all over the sun room. The third white and grey kitten is still there and joining the cuddle piles with its siblings – litter mates and adopted siblings alike!

The long days are really starting to throw me. It feels like it should be the middle of the day right now, and it’s getting past 6:30pm as I write this! We’re expected to drop to freezing, or even below freezing, tonight, so I’ll be heading out one more time to make sure the heat lamps are on, and the plants in the portable greenhouse are brought into the old kitchen for the night. Our temperatures are expected to lurch back and forth all over the place, from highs of near 30’sC/86’sF and lows of 12C/57F or higher, to much more pleasant daytime highs, but lows just barely above freezing again. We’ll be getting high winds again, soo, too.

Somewhere in there, I need to get all sorts of things done outside!

Ah, well. Spring does tend to be a very mercurial season! We just do the best we can.

What else can we do, right? 😁

The Re-Farmer

Not the day I planned

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

But first, the cuteness.

While doing my rounds this morning, I tried to move Poirot’s kittens into the cat cage in the sun room. I set them into the cat cave in one of the cubes and waited, but Poirot would not go into the sun room. So, I eventually moved things around in the water bowl shelter.

I accidentally reposted the first picture, and Instagram won’t let me delete it. If you scroll through, you’ll see a video of mama getting wet cat food while her littles try to nurse.

After she was done eating and moved away, I first put them into a cat carrier set in the space between the three shelters. She went in, and when she came out, the white one was clinging to her side! It fell off and Poirot ran a short distance away, so I but the kitten back into the carrier, then took it into the sun room. I made sure she could see me moving them into the cat cage. I then went inside and monitored the critter cam.

She wouldn’t go in.

After while, I moved things around in the water bowl shelter, then took the kittens, still in the cat cave, and set that up in the water bowl shelter. My concern is, we’re supposed to get a couple of cold nights, and that shelter is too exposed. Inside the cat cave would, at least give them more protection.

She seemed to accept the new set up. When we did the evening feeding, she went to the kibble bowls, then had some of the wet cat food we gave her. This time, though, she didn’t finish it off, so it went elsewhere.

Just a little while ago, my older daughter came in to tell me she found the white and grey kitten on the floor in the sun room. The white kitten was still in the cat cave, and she was asking, how many did Poirot have? The black kitten was missing!

I ended up finding it in one of the cat carriers we keep in one of the shelves supporting the platform.

On the third level.

I really hope that kitten she found hadn’t fallen down from that height!!

I ended up setting the cat cave back into the cat cage. Today was another warm day, but with a cold wind. I think she was trying to find a warmer place for her babies. That carrier would have been okay, if it were at floor level, but she ignored the two that were at floor level!

So now I’m back to monitoring the critter cam.

Meanwhile, Brussel’s two are very active.

Gosh, Kale looks just like her mother!!!

Also, Oofus the Brave is now Sir Robin the Brave. 😄

While my daughter was helping feed the outside cats and taking the wet cat food to Poirot, she found a strange kitten!

It was one of Caramel’s. They are getting active enough to actually climb out of the cat house! We do have a board set up as a ramp, just for the little kittens to be able to get in and out.

So my daughter took one of the other food bowls for the kittens that wasn’t being used, and put it inside the entry to the cat house.

The kittens loved it!

When I took this picture, I saw the food was all gone, so I brought over the container of wet cat food that Poirot didn’t eat and switched bowls. Caramel and her kittens cleaned it all up!

Meanwhile, after my daughter told me about finding the kitten in the sun room, I went looking for the black kitten. We were concerned it might have crawled under something and couldn’t get out. While I was looking for it, I found something – or should I saw, someONE – else!

The missing mostly white kitten! I had seen the mother trying to lure away Eyelet last night, and was afraid they would be gone by morning, so I was relieved to see Eyelet and Grommet were still there. Now it seems the mama has brought her third baby back to the sanctuary of the sun room!

Now I just hope Poirot will join her babies in the cat cage. It’s the safest, warmest place for the babies. That forecast of 0C/32F in a couple of nights is now a forecast for -1C/30F

We shall see how things work out.

Meanwhile…

I was outside way earlier than I wanted to be, doing my morning rounds, and had intended to try and get a bit more sleep after breakfast.

It was shortly after 9 when my phone rang.

It was my mother, and she was in high dungeon.

The home care worker had shown up to do her morning med assist, but her Monday bubble pack was missing its morning pills. This is because, some time ago, my mother had gotten the extra bubble packs down from on top of her fridge and taken them herself. She didn’t follow the days, but just took from the top corner; the Monday morning position. Her extra bubble packs are now stored in the lock box. The home care workers make sure to take the meds from the correct day’s bubble, even if it ended up being in the middle of a pack – which drive my mother bonkers. End result is, now that she was almost finished her current set of bubble packs, the Monday bubble was empty, and the home care worker refused to take them from another day.

It was difficult to understand my mother, as she was in rant mode and all over the place, but from what I got out of her, there was an old bubble pack that had just one day’s meds in it, and the home care worker could have given my mother that, but it was a Friday set of pills, not a Monday. So my mother didn’t get her pills this morning, and she was really angry about it. I asked if she wanted me to come in, and she said no. She didn’t want me driving all that way.

Her refills were to be delivered today, but she said they deliver after the pharmacy is closed, so that would be after her supper time med assist.

I told my mother I would call the home care case coordinator and talk to her about the situation, then call my mother back. I actually had to hang up on my mother because she started basically shouting “stupid, stupid, stupid” over and over again when I’d already said my goodbyes and told her I would call bac soon.

When I called the home care office, the case coordinator answered after the first ring. She was obviously expecting my call!

We talked about the situation and she confirmed what I already tried to explain to my mother (and the care aid did, too). They absolutely have to go by the days and times on the bubble packs, because some people take different pills on different days. The home care aids aren’t trained on the medications themselves. They just have to follow the care plan.

Then she told me she wanted to get together with me to go over my mother’s panel for long term care. Things have changed, and the paperwork needed to reflect that. So we made an appointment for this afternoon.

I then called my mother back.

She was in a completely different mindset, and was actually pleasant on the phone.

As we were talking, I decided I needed to get her meds, rather than wait for delivery. I told her I had an appointment in her town, so I would leave early, get her meds, drop them off and go to my appointment.

Once that was arranged, there really wasn’t anything of note I could start working on in the time period before I had to leave, so I ended up leaving even earlier than needed. I got her refills, which were already in the delivery area. It ended up costing over $200 (her pills are so cheap!), so I took care of that, then headed to my mother’s. She did pay me back.

The first thing I did was confirm that her new painkiller prescription was in. She told me that, after the doctor suggested it, she started using the topical painkiller she uses on her knees, on her back. Between that and Tylenol, she’s fine. But she also complained about waking up in so much pain, she couldn’t move to even reach her painkillers, so… I’m not even going to try and figure it out.

I opened up the lock box to put her bubble packs in, which is when I found out she still had pills for the rest of today, and tomorrow morning. She started telling me how she had told the care worker to just give her the pills for tomorrow morning, and started to get all angry again.

That was much of my time with my mother today. She would go from calm and normal speech, to getting really angry about something – but was associating thing with other things that are completely disassociated!

After a while, I got a message from my daughter. The case coordinator had call the farm to let me know she was available early. So I said my goodbyes and headed out right away.

When I got there, we updated each other on what happened this morning. It turns out the care worker had called the case coordinator from my mother’s place and she could actually hear my mother start to yell at the care worker.

The sad thing is, these home care aids probably deal with much worse in other homes!

We went through the entire panel for both physical and cognitive areas. Some of the questions are hard to answer, because we’re simply not with her to hear or see her engaging in the behaviour.

Along the way, I did tell her about what our vandal has been doing, since it does affect my mother’s health.

That reminds me; apparently, the last time he spoke with her, he said she had called the police on him and wanted to put him in jail. Which she never did, but he believes it.

By the end of it, the case coordinator told me she would go through it all and sort through the information to make sure they got to the right spots. With how my mother has been behaving, it’s looking like she may have crossed the threshold they need to get her into long term care/assisted living. I do hope it works out that way, because my mother really shouldn’t be living alone. As I was getting ready to leave, my mother was again saying how much she wanted to live in the long term care home so many of her old friends, her sister and my father, lived out their last days. I told her to take whatever comes available, just to get into the system! She can get into where she wants to be, later.

All of which has been very long and mentally exhausting. I’m literally falling asleep at my keyboard as, I type this, and have been correcting some of the craziest typos, and more than a few weird sentences!!! I’m hoping to get to bed early today. Tomorrow afternoon, my daughter and I have doctor’s appointments. We’ll both have the paperwork the doctor asked us to bring in, to start the application for disability.

Which means another day of delay with the stuff I want to get done as quickly as possible!

Ah, well. Such is life, eh?

I will be calling it a night soon, though. I’ll just make one more walkabout outside to check on things, then start heading to bed.

I am so…

…so…

…so…

…tired.

The Re-Farmer

Yeah, we got snow today

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The forecast was possible rain and snow during the night.

It was snowing when I head out to do my morning rounds, and kept snowing, of and on, throughout the day!

Not enough to bother the yard cats too much, though.

The first two images above are from a poplar branch. I don’t think I ever noticed before that they get catkins like pussy willows do! So we have signs of spring, even as winter is trying to hang on as long as possible!

The last photo is the covered bed in the old kitchen garden. As I was out there, it was about -1C/30F. In both the covered bed and the portable greenhouse, the thermometers were reading about 0C/32F Not much difference – even in the portable greenhouse, after adding the water filled garbage can as a heat sink. I don’t think the water has in there long enough to get completely warmed up, yet.

On the schedule for today was to head to my mother’s to take her to her doctor’s appointment in the early afternoon. I still had plenty of time, as I was sitting down with my breakfast after doing my morning rounds.

Then the phone rang.

It was home care.

No one was available to do my mother’s morning meds. She’s scheduled to get them done, along with extra time to help her get dressed, if she needs it, empty her commode or even heat something up for her breakfast, at 8:55

It was almost 8:30 when I got the call.

*sigh*

So I quickly called my mom to let her know that I would be heading over as soon as I finished breakfast. My mother kept trying to keep me on the phone as she complained about my having to come out for this and I kept having to cut her off and repeat that I needed to eat and run, and we could talk when I got there. After the third or fourth time, she finally let me go! 😄

When the home care aids do her med assist, they have a folder that’s kept in her lock box where they sign off for the day’s visit and make extra notes, if needed. So when I do the med assist instead, I write up the time and date, saying that I did her meds, and include any other notes that might be necessary. So I knew what time I got there to give her her meds. It was exactly 9:15 by her clock, so only about 20 minutes late.

What I noticed as I was getting her meds out was a bubble in her pack that should have been empty, but wasn’t. Her previous Friday morning pills were still there. So I asked her about it.

She told me that she had taken her meds herself, from one of the extra bubble packs on her fridge, that morning.

!!!!

I was sure I’d pushed them far enough back that she couldn’t reach them! I don’t know how she got them down!

I told her, that was NOT a good thing to do. Apparently, the home care aid agreed, because my mom told me she put the rest of the packs into the lock box. Between the bubble packs, their folder, the blood work requisition forms, and other items in there, having an entire month’s worth of packs in there is tight, even with a lock box as large as this one. That’s why I hadn’t put them all in there myself, when I brought her refills home.

*sigh*

After giving her her meds, I did a few other little things for her, like emptying the commode and taking care of her garbage. My brother had recently visited her and brought a few grocery items she’s always running out of, but when we spoke on the phone last night, I told her to see if she needed anything else and to make a list. She did need a few things, and we still had plenty of time, so we went over the list and then I did her grocery shopping for her.

After that was done, we still had time to visit.

If you could call it that.

She spent a whole lot of time criticizing me for not being dressed “presentable” enough (while I was there, I accidentally tore my jeans), and for having messy hair (my hair was braided and I had hat head), and I should have short hair like she does. In the past, these are criticisms that would have caused me to have all sorts of issues, but I am well past that point in my life now. I call her out on this stuff, now. She doesn’t really get it. She feels completely entitled to say stuff like to about and to, anyone and everyone. Even complete strangers! Then starts going on about how people who aren’t “presentable” are uncivilized, etc.

She totally doesn’t get the double standard and hypocrisy she’s displaying!

Then she brought up the Easter baskets; I’d picked up a paska at the grocery store for her own basket. She remembered that we do Easter baskets, too, and bless them ourselves. She suggested that I bring our basket to her place on the Saturday before Easter, then she and I could go across the street to her church to have them blessed together.

I told her, the last time I brought our Easter basket to be blessed with her, she gave me a hard time about having a bad basket.

Oh, she said. That’s because it was so huge. Would you like me to give you an Easter basket?

I told her, we have all kinds of baskets of all sizes.

She told me I should just bring a small one. Just a little one…

I told her, our basket is the right size for our family.

Now, part of the reason for the size of basket we use is that we spread everything out so nothing is completely buried, rather than jamming everything on top of everything else. We also do things like have our ham on a small plate, have oil (we’ll be having truffle infused olive oil this year) and vinegar in little jars, salt in one of the many pinch pots I collect, a bowl with olives, another with butter, etc. The containers take up a fair bit of space. Plus, of course, we like to lay it out to make a pretty display. So there is actually not a particularly huge amount in the basket. But, it’s the size of the basket that bothers my mother, and people will think bad things if they see such a big basket getting blessed in church…

Never mind that I’ve seen people bring in even bigger baskets than any of ours to be blessed!

Anyhow, when she kept going on about how we should have a small basket like hers, I told her, THAT is why we don’t bring the basket in for blessing with her. She then started saying that maybe I could have a less hard heart, just for her…

…

I pointed out, she is the one that has the hard heart with this! She totally does not understand that she is the biggest reason we don’t go to church right now. We’ve tried going to some of the local churches, including the RC Church I grew up going to, and I was saddened to see how … wordly… they had become. My mother’s church is the only one that seems to remain true, so even though I’m Orthodox Lutheran now, the RC church by her place is the one church I would be going to.

Just not with my mother. I did try to, and she made it quite clear that she did not think I was good enough. I don’t put up with that.

I so miss the church we went to before moving out here!

But I digress!

My mother ended up wanting us to leave even earlier than I’d planned. That did give me time to stop at a gas station, and at a post office in the town my mother’s appointment was in (she believes the staff at her local post office steals her mail. Especially her mail to Poland). We still got there an hour early.

I did have some issues with my mother trying to drive from the passenger seat! Like telling me which way I could go to leave a parking spot and not understanding why I wasn’t driving, when I hadn’t even finished putting on my seatbelt yet. The direction she was telling me I should drive would have had me popping a curb and driving over concrete. Or insisting I undo her seatbelt for her, while I was backing up into the loading zone at her place, so I could have the space to help her out of the truck. It’s been a long time since she’s done stuff like this.

As for the appointment, it did go well, overall. She did dive into something completely new – though she says it’s been an issue for at least a year (???) – before we finally got to talking about her hospital stay and the results of her last two blood tests to monitor her kidney function.

Her kidneys are fine.

My mother was written up for some X-rays, which we could do right after the appointment, and some blood work, which required fasting, so that will have to wait. Since we’ll be doing her next kidney monitoring bloodwork in the first week of May, it can actually wait until then and she can do both in one trip.

While all this was going on, I got a message from my husband. The tax preparer had called and our files were ready to pick up. So, once I got my mother home and her new lab requisition form tucked into the lock box with the monthly ones, I had to dash off. From my mother’s place, it was about a 450 minute drive to get to the tax preparer’s office in the town North of us. After signing what I had to sign and paying for the job, I had to grab the form my husband needed to sign, drive home, get him to sign it, and drive back again! We could actually have brought it back another day, but I wanted to just get it done.

On the plus side, by the time I got home, the snow had stopped (when we were driving to my mother’s appointment, we drove into much heavier snow) and was even all melted away. Which is fine. A little more moisture is not a bad thing. We’re not getting anything close to the spring flooding we’ve had in the past. The old basement floor is completely dry, and the sump pump hasn’t gone off even once. Which means we could actually do with more moisture! It’s getting into fire season.

As I was driving home with the form for my husband to sign, I could see smoke to the west of our place. I figured someone was doing a controlled burn, though it was a windy day for it.

When I was driving home later on, on the last few miles of gravel road, I found myself behind a fire truck with its lights flashing. Maybe half a mile from our turn off, I saw more flashing lights behind me, and pulled over for the second fire truck to go by. Both continued on past our turn off. I could no longer see smoke, but somewhere near by is a fire big enough to require at least two trucks! (There could have been more that went by before I was there to see them.) There’s nothing on the live fire maps, though, so it isn’t a forest or wild fire.

Something to be aware of, with everything drying up so quickly.

Anyhow.

Today ended up having a lot more going on than expected. For now, I’ve got some cat carriers to prep and in the morning, we need to try and snag 3 pregnant females for the vet.

Wish us luck!

The Re-Farmer

Slight change in plans…

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I got a phone call from home care this morning.

No one was available to go my mother’s med assist this morning.

Hmmm…

I was already planning to go to town today, but not for a few more hours. Instead, I arranged with the girls to take are of feeding and watering the cats outside, while I quickly took my meds, got dressed, grabbed our empty water jugs (the main reason I was going to town today) and headed out to my mothers. Since I had three water jugs to take along, my older daughter came down to help me with the doors before feeding the outside cats. She wasn’t impressed that I got another call to cover a no-show (nothing was said about why, this time, and I didn’t ask). She asked if the med assists were being done by volunteers, or if my mother was paying for the service. I told her, it’s covered by our health care system, so they are being paid. My mother has a list of names for all the home care aids she can expect to see. there are ten names on that list. It does seem odd that, with so many aids just for the scheduled route my mother is on (there would be many others), there isn’t someone who can cover when one can’t do the scheduled rounds.

Ah, well. It is what it is. At least the weather is better!

I did remember to phone my mother, first, to let her know I was on the way!

When I got there, my mother was not at all impressed. She’s angry that I have to drive aaaaall that way (it’s about 20-25 minutes of driving time, so not that bad) to do her meds. At least she didn’t start yelling about how we need to get rid of the lock box because she can do her meds herself.

She did, however, get upset over how I was taking the meds out of the bubble pack, and where the lock box was sitting, and where I put the note pad…

She began telling me how the home care aids would pop the pills out of the bubble packs “in the air” (meaning, not over the table, but right into their hands), and pills would go flying all over. Which may have happened a couple of times but, as far as I know, this was before she went to the hospital. It’s why I brought over the tiny dish so the meds could be put into it and double checked.

There was a different reason I was having issues with the bubble pack, though. I was opening the last bubble in this particular pack – and discovered it had been taped shut. I mentioned the tape and my mother said one of the aids did it because she had opened up the wrong day’s bubble.

I got the pills into the little bowl, then checked on the printout inside the cover of the bubble pack to count how many there supposed to be for her morning medications.

One was missing.

A few days ago, while digging for the lab work requisition form, I found a loose pill on the bottom of the lock box.

Now we know where it came from.

When the next aid came to do the med assist saw the pill and my note, she got a tiny envelope for it, labelled it and put it back in the lock box, so I was able to open that up and include it with the rest of the pills Mom was to take this morning.

I then made out a detailed note about when my mother got her medications, what I found and what I did, including putting a new bubble pack into the lock box.

My mother also has an inhaler to take morning and night and I asked her about it, but she said she hasn’t really been taking it. It was a test to see if it would help any with her breathing issues, and it made no difference that she could tell. So we skipped that.

Since I was there anyhow, I did some other stuff for her. The aids are supposed to have extra time booked to help my mother with things like a meal assist (she usually has food ready before they arrive). Some they ask if she needs anything done. Some of them never do. For her morning visit, this includes emptying the bucket in her commode, but they’re also supposed to be available to help her get dressed if she needs it.

I stayed with her to visit for a bit longer, basically waiting until the pharmacy in town opened at 9am, so I could phone them. When my mother started to complain again about my coming out – she is convinced the aids are cancelling simply because they don’t want to do their jobs – I told her that my being able to come out, and having a reliable vehicle to do it, is a blessing. That seemed to take her aback a bit, and I think she liked the idea of thinking of it that way.

After saying my goodbyes to my mother, I spent some time in the truck to update my family and my siblings before calling the pharmacy. With the meds my husband takes, I wasn’t sure they’d even be ready so quickly; he’d called in his refills just yesterday. As we were talking, she asked my time frame, so I told her where I was (which gave her an idea of how long it would take) and why. We deal with this particular pharmacist often enough that she remembers our names and most of my husband’s medications. When I mentioned that there was no one to do my mother’s med assist this morning, she completely understood. They had been in the same situation with her own mother – they even had a lock box. She said they often had home care cancelling visits for them, too. Being in another town, they had their own home care office and staff, but the issue was exactly the same. Last minute cancellations that the family had to cover, frequently. It seems to be a pretty universal problem, and not just in our province.

As for my husband’s refills, they wouldn’t be able to have them ready today, so that’s still scheduled for delivery in a couple of days. Which is fine. I still needed to make the drive to town. I just wasn’t going to go to the pharmacy as well.

Once in town, I got the water jugs refilled. I have a “frequent buyer” list where, after getting 10 refills, I get one free, so one of my refills was free today.

While there, I picked up a couple of things for home, as well as things for our Easter basket. I think we have everything we want to put in it, this year, except for a small ham, which we might simply skip this year.

That done, it was just a quick stop for fuel before heading home. After unloading the truck to my daughter in the house, I left her to put things away while I parked the truck and closed up the gate. I had noticed the plastic on the cover over the raised bed in the old kitchen garden had some gabs fluttering in the wind, so I got the clear duct tape to secure it more.

Before finishing up and heading inside, I spotted Brussel with her babies and decided to give her a squeeze treat. She was really nervous today, though.

I found myself wondering if other cats had been bothering her and her babies – or maybe a skunk or a raccoon! In the two videos above, you can see how agitated she was.

Once I started giving her the squeeze treat, she was right in there – still agitated and somewhat aggressive, but very quick to start eating the treat! When I had to move my hand out so I could use my other hand to squeeze out what was left in the tube, she actually snarled at me and attacked my hand, trying to pull it back! I ended up squeezing the remaining paste onto my fingers (it didn’t start out on purpose!) and let her lick the treat off. She was okay with that, even as she continued to snarl at me.

It should be interesting to see if she has calmed down any, when I do the evening feeding.

I’m glad I was able to go into town for errands today, though. As I write this, we’ve reached our expected high of 6C/43F We’re actually supposed to stay above freezing overnight, but in the wee hours, we’re supposed to start getting a combination of rain and snow, which is supposed to continue through tomorrow. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 2C/36F, but if the long range forecast is at all accurate, that’s going to be the coldest high we have from now on. We’re even expected to reach 15C/59F in a few days! Things are supposed to cool down again, and we’re even supposed to get more mixed rain and snow later in the month, but daytime highs are no longer expected to dip below freezing.

Not including wind chill. That’s a whole other animal!

I will continue to monitor the temperatures inside the greenhouse. While it gets colder overnight, it still maintains at least some warmth. I might decide to try starting seeds inside there, rather than in the basement, when it’s time to start the next batch.

As it is now, I am expecting to start potting up the pre-germinated tomato seeds tomorrow. I could do some tonight, but I want to be able to do all of them at once. Maybe not all 4 varieties, but at least all the seeds in a couple of varieties, just because of space issues.

With how chilly it is in the basement, they should handle the cooler night time temperatures in the greenhouse fairly well! My younger daughter has made a point of working on things while in the basement, so that the heater can be left running. She’d been down there for a couple of hours when I joined her for a bit, and the thermometer was still at 12C/54F. Meanwhile, the thermometer in the greenhouse was reading 19C/66F!

With the combination of rain and snow we’re getting tomorrow, I’m not going to uncover the raised bed but, by the day after, it should be thawed enough that we can take the mulch off the winter sown seeds.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what manages to germinate.

The Re-Farmer