Their right hand doesn’t know what their left hand is doing!
This is what WordPress’ AI image generator thinks I look like. 😂
I was just sitting down with my supper when the phone rang. I recognized the number as the home care scheduler.
*sigh*
She was very, very apologetic, but they had cancellations and there was no one to cover my mother’s bed time med assist for tonight and tomorrow night. Other visits are covered.
Bed time only?
Yes, she confirmed.
This confused me because her supper time and bed time meds are always done by the same person. If someone cancelled, how does it work that only the bed time assist wasn’t covered, and for two nights in a row?
She explained that they had to pull for a client.
…
I asked what that meant.
It turned out that the cancellation wasn’t one of my mother’s scheduled home care aids. It was someone else. Someone that did not have anyone that could over for them (like I do for my mother). So she had to pull people away from other clients that did have people to cover for them, like my mother. She was able to find someone that could do her supper visit instead, but not her bed time visit.
…
So… I would be covering for someone so they could cover for someone else, that was covering for someone that did not have anyone to cover for them.
It took me a moment just to worth through that verbally and a while longer for her to work through what I’d just said and…
Yes. That’s exactly what was happening.
Well, at least I had time to finish my supper before I had to leave, since my mother’s suppertime med assist was covered.
First, I updated my family and my siblings, then I called my mother.
She was in a great mood when she answered, telling me she was just finishing her supper and “a very pretty boy” had just left after doing her med assist.
So I told her that he wouldn’t be coming back, because I was going to be coming in.
This confused her. Before he left, he had assured her he would be coming back. Around 8, she asked (I believe she’s scheduled for 8:50), and he said yes.
…
I told her I would call the scheduler back and find out what’s going on.
The problem?
It’s now outside office hours. It went straight to voice mail. Their message gave a bunch of information, including that no one would be listening to any messages during evenings and weekends.
Any message I left on a Friday night wouldn’t be heard until Monday.
*sigh*
Very quick update message sent, and I called my mother back. I explained that I wouldn’t be able to get through to the scheduler and confirmed again that he said he would be back.
Yes.
So I told her that, if no one came by 9pm, let me know and I would go over to do her meds. I would also leave her meds for tomorrow’s bedtime assist, just in case. If she didn’t call me, I would know that he showed up and everything was okay.
I headed outside this morning with my usual feeding of adorable beasts and doing my rounds. I had a bit of a surprise when I got to the main garden area.
In the first picture, you can see a Hopi Black Dye sunflower, still trying to bloom! All of the sunflowers, which I thought were killed off by our last frost, look like they’ve actually recovered! Wild!
I had some plans to make a stew later today, so I decided to do a small harvest (second image above). Just enough potatoes for the day, plus our only bulb onions of the year! These were in the high raised bed and their necks were bent by rolling cats, so they weren’t going to get any bigger. The only onions we planted this year were the seeds included in our seed mixes. Quite a few came up, then disappeared. In the high raised bed, just these got big enough to form bulbs. All the others were basically just the greens. Even the really strong and healthy looking ones in the old kitchen garden are nowhere near starting to form bulbs.
Next year, we’ll be starting seeds indoors again. 😄 From our own seed, too.
I was back inside, helping my daughter, who’d been working on the “cat free zone” (the living room) for most of the night. We’ve basically been just shoving things that needed to be protected from the cats into there, but never quite getting the chance to go back and put them away properly. It had gotten to the point that there was just a path in between furniture to the shelves in front of the window, where I’ve got tomatoes ripening and seeds drying.
I didn’t get to help her for long before the phone rang.
It was home care.
I have to admit, it’s been a long time since they’ve called. The scheduler was very apologetic, but they had a last minute cancellation. Someone called in sick.
My mother’s meds were scheduled for 9am.
It was about 8:35 when she called. Driving time alone to my mother’s is 25 minutes.
I didn’t even bother changing out of my grubbies. I just made a quick call and left a message with my mother, grabbed my purse and headed out. So she got her meds just a little bit behind schedule.
Apparently, the person who was supposed to come this morning was also supposed to do my mother’s two evening visits, and she didn’t show up for those, either. Apparently, a guy came to do it, and he was all the way from the city! I appreciate that they found someone to do her evening meds. Her and however many other people are on that home care aide’s list!
In the end, it worked out. My mother was still in bed and not feeling well. I ended up making some toast for her, so she’d have something to eat with her meds. She also likes to have milk, half and half with boiling water, as her beverage, so I made that, too – finishing off both her milk and a loaf of bread in the process of making her breakfast. I told her I would get her more milk and asked if she needed anything else. I figured I would go get it while she was having a peaceful breakfast.
Which is when things got strange. I have no idea how she interpreted my request, but she seemed to think I was trying to rush her and was leaving right away or… I don’t know. She started going on about how she needs to rely on me and my siblings more now, and making …. less than charitable, shall we say … comments about my brother and sister. Now, I admit, to a certain extent, I can understand about my sister. She used to call my mother almost every say, and visit on some of her days off from work (she only works 3 days a week at a Walmart). In fact, my mother used to lord it over me, how my sister was calling her every day. Then my sister started to get more involved in their church again. The Worldwide Church of God, which is recognized as a cult. Her behaviour has changed since then, and she has been … not cutting the family off, but definitely cutting us out of things. She’s back to refusing to celebrate birthdays (they’d relaxed on that for a while) and hating Christmas and Easter, going on with the long debunked claims about them being pagan holidays, etc. There are definite issues there, but my sister does still do things like to my mother’s laundry, or mop her floors, and will pick up things like clothes and other things from Walmart for her. My sister used to sew her own clothes all the time and she knows my mother’s measurements, so anything she gets for my mother, she tailors to fit. So while there is definitely tension and issues, she does still help out in ways my brother and I can’t. We each have things we can do individually for my mother that the others aren’t able to.
Anyhow.
She made a comment about my wanting to leave so soon (I think she decided my wanted to get her milk while she was having breakfast meant I was in a hurry to leave?) and how there are two girls at home that can help take care of my husband. Which threw me, because my mind wasn’t there at all. I told her, we’re winterizing. There’s lots of work to do. She actually seemed confused by that. I don’t think she ever knew all the things my dad and brothers did to prepare the house and yards for winter.
I kept trying to bring her back to, I want to get you milk, do you need anything else? but she kept going back to saying things about my brother and sister. Finally, I just grabbed my hat and purse and told her, I’m going to get you some milk.
To which she told me to hold on… she might need something else…
…
*sigh*
In the end, there were just a couple of things from the grocery store she wanted, but we also checked her Volataren supply. She still had but, since she’s using it on her back now, as well as her knees, it was worth picking up more. Which meant a trip to the pharmacy.
My mother then started getting cash out, took out a 50, and asked if I wanted an envelope. I said it would be good, since I put all her change and receipts back into the envelope for her to go through later. She started looking for an envelope, found one on her table – and it still had the change and receipts from the last time I did shopping for her! Then, just in case, she took the bills from that and included it with the $50 bill she already had ready.
I then left her to her breakfast and my first stop was at the pharmacy. They know me pretty well by now, and I’ve had pleasant chats with the manager a few times. They are aware that I’m shopping on behalf of my mother, and I’ve also talked about having to come in to cover for home care way too often. So when I came in and the manager saw me coming in so early in the day, I told him about home care cancelling again this morning – but, it turned out to be okay, since it meant I could run errands for my mother, too.
He laughed and said, “let’s not tell them that!” 😄
My mother’s Voltaren turned out to be on sale, which was nice – until I tried to hand over the $50, then went into my own wallet for the change. The manager very sheepishly asked if I had anything smaller. This early in the day, making change for a $50 would have emptied his float! He even commented that he should have a bigger float, but almost no one pays in cash anymore. In the end, I had enough of my own cash to add to my mother’s smaller bills and was able to pay with exact change. He was so very thankful!
I’ve worked retail for many years. I totally get it!
We talked about how so few people use cash these days, but then you have people like my mother. She simply could not use a debit card. It’s beyond her. He commented that, if ever the machines go down, though, it’s people like my mother that will be in the better position!
That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up the few things my mother wanted, plus I got a couple of extra things that were on sale that I knew she’d enjoy and could put in her freezer. It was still a really small shopping trip.
When I got back to my mother’s and put things away, showing her what I got different, I tried to entertain her with what happened at the pharmacy. In the end, I think I only confused her. She seemed to be trying to figure out how they were trying to cheat her by not being able to make change for a $50 bill, that early in the day.
*sigh*
Then she started going through the envelope with the change and receipts and the contents didn’t make sense to her. I told her again, because I used the smaller bills, adding in my own cash, there was no change from the pharmacy. The change in the envelope was only from the grocery store.
I’m not sure she got it.
In the end, I didn’t stay much longer. My mother was feeling very tired and I encouraged her to go back to bed, which she said she would do. She told me she’d even used her LifeLine last night, to talk to someone about how she was feeling. She wanted them to tell her what to do, but they can’t really do that. The guy did ask her if she wanted him to call an ambulance, and she told him no. Instead, she told him he could go back to bed, and she would do the same.
I hope she did go back to bed after I left!
From there, I went straight home. My daughter had managed a lot more progress on the living room while I was gone, including moving some things to the basement. (If we can figure out how to get it down the steps, I’d like to move the big aquarium to the basement, too.) She was really exhausted – I think she was up all night! – and was feeling sick, but had just remembered that she had a prescription to pick up for our joint appointment tomorrow. It’s a vaccine that needs to be kept refrigerated, so it was something to call in at the last minute. She did that and was told it’d be ready for pick up this afternoon, and I told her I’d take care of it, and sent her off to bed. She was more than happy to do that!
Which meant that, after a couple of hours, I was on the road again. My husband needed a few things from the pharmacy, too, so that worked out. Before heading home, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a couple of small trays of sushi as a thank you for my daughter. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t eaten, again.
By the time I got home again, it was time to feed the outside cats. I headed out again later, to close some things up.
Some of the kittens have discovered they really, really like the portable greenhouse! That’s Colby snuggling with a much, much smaller tabby in the foreground. I’m not sure about the other older kitten, watching me through the doorway. I’ll have to remember that distinctive black chin. When I moved around, I spotted two more littles, curled around each other on the grass near a luffa pot. Today was a decently warm day, but they quite enjoy the extra warmth, when they can find it!
I’ll be heading outside one more time before calling it a day. With the extra trips out, I did not accomplish what I’d intended to, but none of it was particularly time dependent. We’ll be out again for much of tomorrow, too. After that, there are no more planned outings until I have to pick up my mother’s refills on Sunday, then my husband and I have a dental appointment later next week. We’re supposed to have good weather so, hopefully, we’ll be able to get the bigger outside projects done. Getting the sun room cleaned out for the winter will probably be the biggest and longest job. The critters have made a real mess in there – and I don’t mean just the cats!
That is Lady Hypotenose, in the wee hours of the night, tending her now five kittens! I saw them on the camera earlier, swirling around her like a vortex, except the new baby, who was hunting nip. I look a couple of minute later and there she was with three of her babies (the fourth one ran out of frame), and her newly adopted baby, nursing them all in the middle of the sun room.
What a good mama!
When I went to feed them this morning, they were all over the place, but when I came back after finishing my rounds, they were all gone! Every one of them! I couldn’t see them anywhere in the sun room!
I went out to check the cat house and various other spots, but nothing.
Then I came back to the sun room and found a single kitten, going for the food. I had no idea where it came from.
So I went into the old kitchen and watched through the door with the missing screen, and spotted a kitten squeeze its way out from under the counter shelf.
*phew* What a relief! I was afraid Lady Hypotenose changed her mind about keeping her kittens in the sun room!
After that, I had a bit of time before I needed to head out to my mother’s, to take her for her doctor’s appointment. She really struggled to use the stool and get into the truck but, unfortunately, this was not an appointment that could be done over the phone.
We were able to go through a whole bunch of things during the appointment, from going over the results of her various blood tests (all is fine), talking about her leg swelling with a dosage change and confirming that yes, she has toe fungus, and getting a prescription for that. My mother brought up her frequent complaint about dry mouth, that happens only when she’s sleeping. I’ve been telling her, she’s probably sleeping with her mouth open. I get it, too, sometimes. So when the doctor asked some questions and came to the same conclusion, my mother was right ticked off!
I think the doctor was ticked off, too – or at least shocked – but not at my mother. I brought up the referral for another mental health assessment, since it’s been more than a year, and home care needs it for paneling my mother for a nursing home. The doctor looked up the last penal report and was shocked it wasn’t enough. She wrote a referral for the assessment, but also wrote a letter to the home care coordinator (I’m glad I keep her business card in my phone case, because she needed the contact information!). I brought up that my mother really shouldn’t be living alone, and my mother added that she is having more trouble moving around and has to lean on furniture to get around he apartment.
I think the case coordinator is going to get a rather brusk letter about my mother’s conditions, and that she needs to be in care.
There were a few other things, some of which I had to explain to my mother as I brought her home. Normally, we would have stopped for lunch or something after the appointment, since we were on the road at lunch time, but with the changes in her prescription, I needed to get her bubble packs to the pharmacy.
My mother was so tired, she actually started to fall asleep during the drive!
Once I got her home, I went through the lock box and took some bubble packs out, leaving the new one that just got started today. My mom will stick to the same dose until that pack is done.
I also found a message from my daughter. The pharmacy had already called me on the land line, wanting to talk to me about my mother’s prescriptions! When I got there, I joked with the pharmacist that they are FAST! They were calling before I even got my mother home, yet!
They took the bubble packs to adjust them, but the new prescription for my mother’s toes as another issue. I was warned right away that it was expensive, while she looked up if it was covered by our province’s prescription insurance.
It wasn’t.
My mother had given me cash, and asked me to get some more Voltaren as well, since she’s using it on both her knees and her back now. Between that and the new prescription, it wasn’t enough, so I paid the balance.
When I got back to my mom’s and went over everything with her, and told her I’d covered about $50, she was furious. This little bottle was $50? she said, as she threw it across the table. No, it cost over $120. The $50 or so was what I covered.
Cue much ranting and raving about how it’s just toes, she didn’t need it, she didn’t want it.
She had been quite happy to get the prescription when we left the doctor’s, but I guess she expected it to be free, just like she did with the inhaler when I covered that for her, too.
It took a while to calm her down and give her the instructions on how to use it.
I suspect she will refuse to use it.
After all that, I was more than happy to leave. I still had my own errands to run at Walmart, since I was out, anyhow.
It had been raining off and on all day, and I even got warnings from home that it was pouring buckets. It wasn’t that heavy where I was, though, so the drive to the Walmart wasn’t too bad. I’m just happy to have the rain. We need it so badly!
Once I got to the Walmart, I could finally have my own lunch, too!
I didn’t have a large list, but it was enough to make the drive to Walmart worth it. Especially when it came to the cat food.
This is what $178.63 looks like.
Yeah. Not much there at all.
The most expensive items were the two bags of kibble, plus a case of wet cat food. I also got a box of pet stain/odour remover, to cat supplies alone were in the $100 range.
My husband requested water flavours, but they had only one flavour of his preferred type/brand, so he got three different types. I also grabbed more distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. He still has a good supply, but it’s a lot cheaper at Walmart, so I got extra.
There’s some coffee creamer for the girls, some cleaning vinegar and facial tissues, some powdered chicken bouillon, and some rye bread. They had an excellent price on corn on the cob, so I picked up a bunch.
And that’s it. That was almost $200
Ouch.
By the time I was heading home, it was late enough in the day that I asked my daughter to feed the outside cats. She tells me that all the kittens, except the two garage kittens, came to the house to eat, and she even got to pet some of the new littles! I’m glad because, by the time I was bringing in more cat food through the sun room, they were almost all hiding again.
The system that gave us all that wonderful rain today has passed us by and it seems like the main body of it will go right over where the huge fire across the lake is. Even with the rain, the air was still smoky. We might get a bit more rain tonight, but just barely.
I actually don’t have any appointments or planned errands for the next couple of weeks! I’m amazed. It’s been so long. Of course, there will be the usual unplanned stuff – trips to the dump, any new calls to cover my mother’s med assists for home care, stuff like that – but I’m otherwise actually going to be able to stay home for the next while!
What an amazing thing. I might actually get some progress done on various projects that had to be set aside!
My husband and I had joint dental appointments this afternoon, which meant – of course – I couldn’t sleep last night! I got maybe three hours of sleep before I finally got up to take care of the outside cats and do my morning rounds.
Once the outside stuff was done, I had enough energy to grab a couple of PB sandwiches for breakfast and then crashed for a couple of hours, so I would at least be safe to drive.
I don’t think my husband was able to eat anything at all this morning. He meds really mess with his appetite, so he doesn’t typically have any sort of breakfast.
Which turned out to not be a good thing!
His appointment was at 12:45, and the plan was for us to go for a late lunch after we were done. We both had changes in our medical information to update them on before our appointments, so we headed out early to have time for that.
Thank God for AC in the truck. For all the rain we’ve had, it’s still hot and muggy, with the humidex making it so much worse. Stepping outside of the house or truck was like walking into a wet wall of heat. The rain doesn’t seem to have done much to reduce the smoke in the air, either. We’re just as smokey today as we were yesterday, and yesterday was the worst I’ve seen since we moved out here.
We had a bit of a surprise during the drive to town. For some distance, we could see something on the side of the road. A whole bunch of large somethings.
They turned out to be Guinea hens! About five or six of them! Someone’s flock had escaped. 😄 I had no idea anyone in that area kept Guinea’s.
Once at the dentist, I had a form to fill out with my new information. For my husband, he brought printouts and we just handed it to them to input into his file from. None of these forms ever have enough space for the number of medications he’s on. The first time we filled one of these forms out for him, we wrote the list out on the back and it pretty much filled the page.
My husband got called in first, and I had a while to wait before I was called in. Long enough for him to get his Xrays done, and then inform us they had to double the freezing to do what they had to do, so it was going to take longer than expected.
My own visit was actually a pleasant surprise… I think. I had a couple of teeth that have been bothering me, and I thought I had a cavity starting under a crown. After the Xrays were done, they found no cavities. In fact, other than needing a cleaning, my teeth are great.
So, why the problems I’ve been having? The dentist was perplexed. In the end, the only thing he did was the slightest of grinding and polishing of a sharp edge that I was feeling that I thought was the edge of a cavity. I didn’t even need freezing. He tried all sorts of things to try and track down the source of the issues I was describing, and everything was testing out fine. About the only thing he can think of is that there is a crack under a filling, too small to show up on an Xray, but he really couldn’t tell.
I will have some other work done another time, and eventually get to talking about what to do about my missing teeth, while we still have insurance, later on.
So my husband and I are booked for another double appointment next month.
My husband, unfortunately, needs more work. Today he got a temporary fix, but he does have a confirmed cracked tooth under a filling. He was in the waiting room by the time I got out, and still so frozen, going for lunch was out of the question!
We booked the next appointment, but had a problem settling the bill. For some reason, our insurance wouldn’t go through. My husband’s did, but not mine. This has happened before, and not just as the dentist. After fussing with it for a while, she ended up just printing out the invoice/receipt for both of us for our records. They’ll keep working on whatever is going on with the insurance company and if there’s anything not covered (I believe we are covered 90%), they’ll mail us a bill. I seem to recall they did this for me the last time I was there and had a tooth pulled.
From there, we made a quick stop at the grocery store. My husband stayed in the truck – he was in no shape to walk around! – and I dashed in to pick up something he could keep in his medication fridge to eat once the freezing wore off.
My the time we got home, it was time for me to head out to feed the outside cats and start my evening errands.
Which is when my cell phone rang.
*sigh*
Of course.
It was home care.
They didn’t have anyone for my mother’s med assist for tonight and tomorrow night. I confirmed the times she was scheduled for. I had enough time to update my siblings in our group chat, call my mother, grab a food and go.
When calling my mother, I found out that my sister had left not long ago. She had been able to come over to do my mother’s laundry during her scheduled time, which was really nice. I would have done it, if we didn’t have our dental appointments. Given what happened with the med assists, if I had done it today, I would have gotten home and had to turn around and come back almost right away! My sister is normally not available, so she doesn’t even have the lock box code.
Unfortunately, every time I call my mom to let her know I have to cover the med assist again, she starts ranting at me. Why are they calling me? Why don’t I tell them I live far away? Like it’s somehow my fault. I tell her, don’t take it out on me! She says she isn’t; that I’m the “victim”, so she doesn’t seem to realize that yelling at me every time really is her taking it out on me, even if it’s home care she’s mad at.
The call was short, though, as I told her I needed to have my supper (lunch, actually), then go.
Including the time it takes to get ready, open the gate, get the truck out, then make the drive, it takes about half an hour or slightly more to get to my mother’s. While there, I give her the supper time meds, then prepare her bed time meds for her to take herself, later. She’s supposed to take her supper time meds with food. She had her Meals on Wheels at noon today, but didn’t really have much she was up to for supper and ended up asking me to get some instant oatmeal started for her, and prep her milk that she likes to add to it as well. Even so, I was there for less than 10 minutes, and then it was another half hour to get home.
Talking to my older daughter about the situation just a little while ago, she pointed out that we won’t be able to do this in the winter, and I’m the closest! We’ve already had one call where the person who was supposed to do my mother’s med assist wasn’t going to come into town because it was too dangerous to drive on the highway during a storm. I told the person calling me, if the aid couldn’t come in because the roads are too dangerous, neither can I! (Which was completely true that day.)
That’s something I’m going to have to remember to bring up with the case coordinator. There’s a reason my mother’s meds are in a lock box, but if med assists are so unreliable due to staff shortages, this is going to be a real problem.
Unless, of course, they finally get my mother into the nursing home, like she wants so much!!!
So that was done, and I’ll be back tomorrow. My brother and SIL will be out this weekend with their grandkids, if all goes well, so maybe my brother will be able to come with me, too. With how she treats him, he doesn’t want to, but she behaves better when I am there.
Anyhow.
Once done and back home, I was able to finish my evening rounds.
That smokey coloured garage kitten is getting darker as s/he get bigger. I still wonder where the blue eyes genes came from! There has to be a cat at a neighboring farm. It certainly isn’t from one of the males that lives here.
The white and grey is becoming increasingly curious, and allowing me to be closer. The smokey one runs away, which actually surprises me. After that one time I was able to not only pet it, but pick it up and hold it, I thought it would be the easier one to socialize. Instead, it’s been the harder one!
It does help that the mother allows me to pet her and starts purring. If she’s around, like she was when I got the above pictures, they are less prone to simply running away and hiding.
Once the evening stuff was done, I could finally settle in for the day. It’s not even 8pm yet, but I’m seriously considering going to be, with how little sleep I got last night. The only reason I have against it is that it’s so hot and muggy in my bedroom/office. The AC doesn’t affect this part of the house, and there’s only so much the fans can do, even with I have the box fan set to blow the hot air and smoke OUT the window during the day.
Tomorrow is supposed to get just as hot as today, with some rain in the late evening. Then we’re supposed to get about a week with little change in the temperature, but no more rain. Also, no change in the ongoing severe air quality warnings.
I do have to make sure to make a dump run tomorrow. I’m really dreading it. The conditions have gotten so bad there, I skipped going last week. I did as on a local group if anyone knew if they’d brought out the front end loader and pushed all the built up trash into the pit, but no one confirmed either way. Considering it’s been at least two months since the trash accumulating at the edge of the pit has been pushed in, you’d think it would be done by now.
I truly doubt it.
Our new council is really dropping the ball when it comes to this particular landfill. There are two others in our large municipality, but I don’t know their conditions, I’m not sure where they are, and it’s really not worth the extra cost in gas to drive the distances to them.
It needs to be done, though.
What a pain.
Ah, well. We’ll deal.
For now… yeah. I think an early bed time is definitely a necessity.
My daughter and I had back to back morning medical appointments with our doctor last week, but we had to reschedule to today, since we didn’t have transportation last week.
Last night, I got a call from Home Care.
They didn’t have anyone to do my mother’s med assist for this morning.
*sigh*
Thankfully, we have to drive through my mother’s town to get to where our doctor’s clinic is, anyhow. It just meant leaving earlier, and my mother getting her meds half an hour earlier than scheduled (still within the time range they are supposed to be taken), so we could get to our appointments on time.
Which meant the outside cats got fed a bit early, too!
The full belly babies were very snuggly, afterwards!
My daughter and I were then off to the doctor’s, stopping at my mother’s along with way. I popped in to do the med assist. My mother did know I had an appointment to get to, and knew it would be a quick stop. Thankfully, she did not try to delay me, like she had the last time I had appointments to get to!
While she was doing her meds, I noticed she had started working on her grocery list. I was wondering about that as, the last time I asked, she told me she didn’t need one. I kept expecting her to call for Friday or the weekend, and she never did, so I knew she’d be low on things. I wasn’t going to be able to do it today, but my friend is picking me up tomorrow morning, as she goes to take her car to the garage to be looked at. We are planning to visit my mother as well, so we’ll see what works out, timing wise. My sister is also planning to visit my mother tomorrow so, if necessary, she can do the shopping. My mother prefers that I do it, though. I helped my mother do her shopping so many times before she could no longer manage it, I know what my mother prefers. My sister doesn’t, my mother hasn’t been happy with some of her substitutions. 😁
That done (my mother even behaved! 😄), we continued to the town our doctor is in. We didn’t get there as early as I had been planning on, but early enough that I could make a quick stop in the grocery store that shares their parking lot.
The only thing I needed to get was bread, but neither of us had had breakfast, so I was thinking of picking up some sushi or something. There was none to be had, but I did find an alternative. They had a selection of hot meals set up with their rotisserie chicken display. So I picked up a perogie dinner and a lasagna, plus a couple of drinks. Other options were meatloaf with mashed potatoes, vegetables and gravy, or a porkchop with mashed potatoes, vegetables and gravy.
My daughter chose the lasagna for her meal, and we ate in the truck. My perogies were unusual in that, not only did they not come with the usual sausage and sour cream, they were served with vegetables in a white sauce, topped with melted shredded cheese.
I’m not sure which of those did me in.
After eating, we went into the clinic about 15 minutes early. Once checked in, I immediately went to the washroom.
While there, I got a message from my daughter saying that they’d come for me, to take me into a room early, so we traded appointment times and she went in ahead of me.
So I went to the waiting room and…
Immediately ran back to the washroom.
Then I got a message from my daughter.
Her lunch was suddenly giving her grief, too. She suggested we trade appointment times again, telling me which room she was in. So when I got out, I let the receptionist know what we were doing, and went to the room my daughter was in while she ran for the bathroom.
When our doctor came in, she clarified with me that we were both seeing her today, and had just switched times.
For my appointment, I had two things to talk to her about. The first was about my painkillers. I’ve been on T3s and they really haven’t been any better than taking over the counter painkillers, so there’s no point in me being on prescription painkillers. This is something I’ve had issues with all my life, with prescription medications, and especially painkillers. Either I need basically double the dose to have any sort of effect, or they don’t work like they’re supposed to. Since we’re basically just treating the symptom, and this is for my arthritis pain, I asked if we could try me on anti-inflammatories.
After talking about it, she agreed. I got two prescriptions; one for the anti-inflammatories that I can take as needed, up to three times a day. The other is for something I would take only once a day, and it’s designed to protect my stomach lining. I’m also supposed to only take them with food, because the anti-inflammatories can be very hard on the stomach.
We’ll try them for 3 months, then do a series of blood tests, including for kidney function, and see how things are.
Then there was the other thing I wanted to talk to her about.
My arm that I hurt when falling, about a month ago.
I almost decided not to bring it up, since it’s been doing better, but there is still pain that should not be there.
I told her what happened, and how my arm felt after landing so hard on it. I started to raise my arm to show her what my range of motion was like, only do discover I could only lift my elbow to shoulder height before pain stopped me. !!!
So she manipulated my arm a bit, while feeling at my shoulder joint, and I could tell her exactly where the pain was, and when.
It’s also the part of my palm under my thumb and my elbow that still have issues.
She took some notes and gave me a requisition for X-rays. Lab and X-ray is at the hospital not far from the clinic – and I needed to go there on behalf of my mother anyhow – so I could do that right away.
When I was done, my daughter was still in the waiting room and got called in soon after. I got my printout and waited.
After hitting the washroom again.
Once my daughter was done, we drove over to the hospital.
Thankfully, they had two bathrooms as we both needed to run for it!
I then talked to the receptionist on behalf of my mother. There was a requisition for bloodwork on file that I picked up, so my mother can get that done along with her monthly blood work. That gets done in the first week of the month, so I booked the medical appointment my mother has been asking for, for the week after. That way, the doctor could also go over the lab results with my mother, too. When I spoke to my mother last night, she was lamenting that they didn’t call her about her last blood test. I told her, they only call if there’s a problem. If they don’t call, that means everything is good!
She doesn’t believe that. She thinks they’re hiding things from her.
Appointment made, we went into the lab and X-ray area, literally across the room from the clinic reception desk, and handed in my requisition, then we sat to wait. It wasn’t very long before I got called in.
I had three X-rays done on my shoulder, two of my elbow, and three of my wrist and thumb. What surprised me was when the tech set my hand on the X-ray plate so that it was straight on the outside edge, thumb on top and straight.
The surprise was just how much holding that position hurt.
Not only that but, after the doctor had manipulated my shoulder to examine in, I was starting to feel muscle/nerve pain creeping up from my shoulder to my neck. A sort of pain that was making me feel dizzy. For a while, I thought I would have to get my daughter to do the driving!
That done, we started to head out again – after yet another stop at the bathroom.
There was something my older daughter needed, and there was a dollar type store I knew of that might have it. If it wasn’t there, we’d probably have to go to a craft store in the city to find it, and that wasn’t going to happen today. So this store was our next stop.
Once in the store, we did find what my other daughter needed – or at least the closest to it. I had hoped to wander around the store a bit before we left, though, as it is very different from all the other dollar type stores I normally find.
My insides, however, had other plans.
Okay, we’ll just pay for things and be on our way…
Or not.
As I was paying, I asked if they had a public washer.
No, I was told, but you can use ours if you need to.
Yes, please!!!
So while my daughter took the stuff to the truck, they let me use the staff washroom.
I have no idea what those perogies did to my insides but, by then, I was in serious discomfort. Almost enough to make me forget the pain in my shoulder!
God bless that woman.
Once back in the truck, I called the pharmacy in the town nearest us. They had received my new prescription from my doctor, and would be able to fill it right away. The time it would take us to drive there was likely enough for it to be ready.
That arranged, we were on our way again.
About half way through, I realized I was not feeling good again.
We made it okay, though. My daughter was also feeling unstable, so when we got there, she made the mad dash to their one bathroom first, while I asked about my prescription. The pharmacist was just doing the final check on it. Since I had to wait anyhow, I sat down at the blood pressure machine.
Funny. My blood pressure was a bit high. I wonder why that would be?
The machine was next to the bathroom door, where my daughter was, and I saw a woman with two tiny children try the door. While they were waiting for my daughter to come out, a guy came over with a stroller and joined them.
The entire family ended up taking turns.
I was still okay, and totally get how it can be with such tiny children!, but once I got my prescriptions and the bathroom was free, I ran for it.
Yeah. By this time, I was in major pain.
One of the things we noticed while getting out of the truck, though, was that one of the front tires was looking really low. The front tires were both replaced, but of all four tires, three of them still need to have their sensors/valves replaces. The sensor batteries are dead, and the valves in two of them have a slow leak. This one tire, slightly more than the other.
So we had one more stop to make, at a gas station. I got to stay in the truck while my daughter checked the tire pressure on all the tires, and ended up topping up three of them.
After that, we could FINALLY, head home.
Yeah. As soon as I got home, it was straight for the bathroom.
Then my daughter.
We had two different meals, so it’s strange that we were both affected. She’s lactose intolerant, but I am not. All I can say is, I’m never going to be buying a hot lunch meal from that grocery store, ever again! They were good, too, but absolutely brutal on our insides!
Later on, I had to get my daughter to help me do the evening cat feeding, because I was still too unstable. She, at least, seems to have recovered.
I’m at the point where I am once again starting to really feel the effects of that examination of my shoulder again. My rotator cuff is hurting, and the muscle/nerve pain up to my neck is now affecting both sides of my neck, and my triceps in my left arm.
It’s been about a month since I fell. This is insane! I am sure I didn’t break anything, but I’ve clearly done some major damage somehow in there.
I’m really looking forward to the results of those X-rays.
Thankfully, the rest of my day doesn’t require me to go anywhere, and with the off and on rain, I’m limited in what I can get done outside, anyhow. It’s not even 6pm yet, as I write this, and I’m seriously considering going to bed soon.
My daughters are making supper right now. I’ll be taking some of those anti-inflammatories with my meal, and probably go straight to bed after that. Hopefully, I’ll remain stable enough to actually get some rest!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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 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.
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 