heat lamp

They’re in, and holy smokes!

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First, the more fun stuff. I hit the post office on the way home and found more packages than I was expecting, including – finally! – the new clamp lamps I’d ordered. They were shipped by CanPar and the address we had to use was for the store the post office is in, because the system wouldn’t accept anything else. The benefit of living in such a tiny community. The postal staff knew exactly who it was for and there was a parcel slip in our mail box.

The first photo is everything outside the box. The second is assembled. These lamps are suitable for up to 250W bulbs, so we shouldn’t have the damaged bulb that we got with the heat bulb in the sun room. That lamp now has a 150W ceramic heat bulb in it.

The ceramic bulbs I’ve installed in the lamps are 200W, and they are ready to go. I can put one up somewhere in the sun room, without having to remove the one that’s already there, but I may want to move the one that’s already there and have the warmer bulb in that spot.

The lamp in the isolation shelter will take more doing, as the current lamp needs to be removed completely. We’ll need to open up the roof, remove the rigid insulation “ceiling”, then get the lamp out. The cord is wrapped around the support it’s hanging off of, to keep it out of cat reach. I’m hoping to get that done in the next couple of days, when it’s supposed to be warmer, so that it’ll be ready when it gets colder again.

In other things, today was my day to do my mother’s errands. I had asked her if she wanted me to pick up lunch and she ended up saying to just get food for myself, she would eat what she had.

Of course, I wasn’t going to do that.

I got to town early enough to pick something up before going to her place, but nothing was open until 11am, which is when she was expecting me. I was able to run another errand before parking and waiting the last few minutes before the restaurant I’d decided on, opened. While waiting, I called my mother to tell her I would be there closer to 11:30. She told me she was reheating some potatoes to go with lunch, and I told her, I’m bringing lunch. She doesn’t need to.

She was quite okay with that, and even joked about how spoiled she’s getting with not having to cook!

Soon, I was placing our orders, which were ready faster than I expected for them just opening, then made a quick stop at the grocery store for drinks.

When I got to her place and knocked at the door, there was no answer, but I knew she was home so I started walking in. She was in the bathroom and couldn’t hear me, which was pretty much what I expected.

What I didn’t expect was the strong smell of smoke.

While setting getting the food and drinks onto the table and getting plates, I found the source.

The potatoes my mother said she was cooking had burned. She’d salvaged them, and the carrots she was reheating with them, by scraping the burnt bits into the sink, and the rest were in a bowl on her counter. The burnt bitts were REALLY heavily charred. The frying pan she’d been using was also in the sink, soaking – and totally black!

When my mother came out and saw where I was in the kitchen, she told me about burning them. She said there’s something wrong with the element she was using, in that it stays on high, even when turned down to low.

…

Which may be true. However, this stove was installed brand new, after she moved into this apartment from the one she’d been in when she first moved into the building. She has never said anything about the element being like this before. She’s also never burned anything like this before!

I didn’t say much about it, though while we were eating, I was looking around for a fire extinguisher. Being a public housing building, I would have expected one and asked. She didn’t know what I was talking about at first, so I described what it would look like to her, and she said no, she had nothing like that. Granted, she wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to use one, but it would have been good to have one if an actual fire broke out, so someone else would have it available to use.

While talking about fire extinguishers and alarms, she pointed to the spot on the wall where her CO monitor that my brother got her, used to be. When we set up her place before taking her home from the hospital, my brother checked it and found it had no batteries. We had some issues getting fresh batteries into it and being able to close up the back. There were too many other things that needed to be done, so we took the batteries back out again, and my brother took it home with him to check on later.

My mother’s comment was that she had been “fooled” by it. It had started beeping, but she should the sound was coming from the fire detector on the ceiling, which is also a CO monitor. She’s called public housing and they send someone over. The fire detector was working fine, and the beeping was traced to the CO monitor on the wall.

Long story short, they took the batteries out so the beeping would stop.

…

So not only did my mother think this was some sort of “trick”, but apparently, she thought they were smoke detectors.

I tried to explain to her how dangerous CO poisoning could be, but she preferred to think my brother was somehow messing with her, instead.

*sigh*

I dropped it for now.

Once we were done lunch, we went over her shopping list, which included a trip to the pharmacy for some items this time, and I was soon off. When I got to the truck, though, I took the time to message my family about the things that happened at my mom’s. The burnt food is something home care had told us to watch out for, as it becomes a safety issue. While driving to the pharmacy, I remembered I had the home care coordinator’s business card in my phone case, so I called her when I parked and left a message about it.

Oh, there was another issue I’d tried asking my mother about, and that was getting a Life Line. She’d talked to the woman from the Senior’s Centre; they are the ones that arrange this. Unfortunately, she was confused about the 2 versions of it she can get and wasn’t sure which one to choose. More on that later.

The items my mother had on her list for the pharmacy were easy to find, so I was soon done there and moved on to the grocery store. I was able to get everything on her list, with no substitutions, which was nice.

Today is Tuesday, which is when the common room of her building is used for group low impact exercises, arranged with the local senior’s centre, and people from other buildings come over for it, too. When I got back, they were already starting to gather, so I went around. I had told my mother to go ahead and join them and I could put things away for her, but she was still in her apartment when I got there.

After putting things away, my mother started talking about her bubble packs. It took a while to figure out what she was getting at, and then I had to open up the lock box to be sure, but my mother’s meds were completely out. She said they were going to be delivered, but then didn’t seem sure that they would actually be delivered – and was asking me if I’d picked them up while at the pharmacy! I had no idea about, and she was starting to get so upset, I told her I would just go back to the pharmacy and get them.

It’s a good thing I did.

The prescriptions were prepared for delivery later, so the pharmacist was surprised to see me, but since I was there, she brought out the annual form they need signed to continue doing my mother’s medications in bubble packs. Since they know I have my mother’s permission with this stuff, I was able to sign it on her behalf. My mother would have been very confused by getting that form!

This time, when I got back to her building, my mother was in the common room with the others. So I took care of putting things away, then doing some light house keeping. I hadn’t tested her blood pressure earlier, and it was while I was sweeping that I’d found the box with the machine in it.

My mother had hidden it under her table.

So, no testing her BP this visit! I did put it back on the table, though.

After I finished cleaning up and putting things away, I started heading out. My mother was in behind a table with someone next to her, so I was going to skirt around the group as quietly as possible to give her a hug and a kiss goodbye, but enough people recognized me and started saying hi that I just laughed and said I was going to interrupt, when right through the circle of people to get around to my mother and gave her hugs and kisses. They got a good laugh out of that!

Later on, my mother phoned me and thanked me for that. Apparently, doing this was “good for my reputation”. ??? She explained that the group talks about all sorts of things, and one regular subject is about how many of the seniors are either largely forgotten by their adult children, or treated badly by them. I got the impression my mother hear a lot of positive comments after I left. Which made her happy, so that makes me happy.

She also told me she’s talked to the woman from the Senior’s Center again about the Life Line, and she will be coming by to my mother’s tomorrow to start the paperwork for it. I told my mother that, if necessary, I expect to be home all day, so she can call me if she feels the need.

Meanwhile, I updated my siblings about how things went, including about the CO monitor. My brother soon responded. He found out what was going on. Once he was able to get the batteries in, it started to beep. A double beep every 30 seconds. The display screen also said “end”.

On the back of the monitor, it explained that the monitor needs to be replaced every 10 years and, as a reminder, it would start to double beep every 30 seconds and display the word “end”.

You’d think the public housing guys that maintain CO monitors would have caught on to that.

Or maybe they did, but my mother didn’t understand what they were saying to her.

I feel better about that, at least!

Not so about the burned food. My mother is always super cautious about that sort of thing, so it was *really* unusual for her to not just burn food, but burn it so badly.

As alarming as that is, this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. My mother really wants to be in long term care. She is aware of how much she is physically failing, and she at least somewhat recognizes her own cognitive decline and it, understandably, scares her. I really hope this is what gets her into the care she needs!

Total change of subject.

I got a call from the Cat Lady while I was working on this. She had sent me some security camera images. The property they moved on to about a year and a half ago, backs up against a national park, where lots of people walk their dogs. Six off leash dogs suddenly showed up on their deck, just minutes after their youngest daughter had been out there with Button. Button is completely blind and deaf now, and their youngest daughter makes a point of going out there with him in a harness to get some fresh air when she comes home from school for lunch.

Her husband had chased the dogs off and they confronted the owner, who said outright she didn’t care. Even when they told her their daughter had been on the deck with a blind and deaf cat, the response was, that cat would have been eaten. !!! When they confronted her on that, her response was, I don’t care, I hate cats. !!!! She also called the Cat Lady rude names, and her very butch partner started looking ready to be violent.

They called the RCMP on them. This is not an off leash park, for starters, and they are on something like 10 acres, so that’s quite a distance for the dogs to be running around away from their owners. People that irresponsible with their animals should not have any, let alone 6 big dogs! I just can’t imagine knowing your animals are prone to violence, and not caring if the kill another animal or possibly hurt a child.

They were so relieved their daughter and Button had already gone inside, that’s for sure!

Which lead to an update on Button. His sight had been going for a while now, and then it was just gone. The vet thinks it was a viral infection, in utero. Any other kittens in the litter and the mother likely died, and they really don’t know how Button survived. It has effected his development in many ways. The Cat Lady tells me, they don’t care. They adore him. Even their dog adores him. He is in almost constant contact with a human, and they even take him out for coffee and other outings. And to think, he was supposed to be adopted by someone else entirely, who ended up backing out and adopting another cat, when his vet care kept getting longer and longer!

Meanwhile, she will be looking into booking a couple more neuters for us. I mentioned we might be able to get a female, now that Adam actually comes up to us for pets, so she will see what they can arrange. I told her, whatever they can manage, we’ll happily take. Beggars can’t be choosers! We’ve got so many friendly males, but we really need to get the females done.

She will get back to us when she has more information.

What a day she had, though! I appreciate that, in the middle of all this, she still thinks of us and of how her rescue can help us.

She is so awesome.

The Re-Farmer

An expensive outing

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

Way too expensive ones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did order another 4 pounds of lysine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*choke*

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

Ouch.

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

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

No heated water bowl, though.

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

They didn’t have any, either.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It took them a while to cool down!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was so sweet of him!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, well. Live and learn.

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

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

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

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

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

It’s been an oddly difficult year.

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: yes, we have a harvest! Plus, we will have warm kitties this winter

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No harvest this morning, though. I had time to do my usual rounds before heading out to my mother’s, and that’s it.

I did find these hardy little jewels, though!

Yes, the tiny strawberries are still growing, still blooming and still producing berries! Only a couple were ripe. Whatever variety of strawberries they are, they are certainly appropriate for our climate! It should be interesting to see how they do, when they are transplanted somewhere they can grow wild.

My trip to my mother’s was productive, though she was physically not up to climbing in and out of the truck to go to the bank. Hopefully, my sister will visit on one of her days off and can take her with her car. It’s much easier for our mother to get in and out of her vehicle.

At her request, I picked up a large pizza for our lunch. Today was her first day on the Meals on Wheels program, though. We were done eating before it arrived, and my mother still has half a pizza. That will be two or three meals for her, right there, and the Meals on Wheels will be her supper.

The place that cooks the meals usually sends out invoices at the end of the month, but my mother wanted to pay in advance. She doesn’t trust the post office, though, so she asked the volunteer delivery person – who happened to be one of the social workers that hosts all sorts of activities in the building – to hand deliver it. My mother has been making use of their services on an as-needed basis and always paid cash per meal directly to the delivery person, so we knew this was acceptable.

Lack of volunteers means they only deliver meals three days a week. As we were talking about the delivery days, the social worker told my mother that, if she wanted, she could request more than one meal. She could, for example, order two meals each on Monday and Wednesday, then order three meals on Friday. This way, she could have a meal for every day of the week. My mother was happy to hear that, and said that she would think about it. For now, we’ll just see how the three days a week works out for her.

The meal comes with a container of soup, which my mother wanted to eat right away, leaving the rest of the meal for later in the day. So I headed out with her list and did her shopping for her. It didn’t take long, even with going to both the pharmacy and the grocery store. My mother is set for a good while now.

By the time all was done and I was heading home, I noticed that I would reach our area in time for the post office to reopen for the afternoon. I knew one package was expected today. Another was due in a couple of days, but sometimes they come in early.

There turned out to be three packages waiting for me!

This is what was in two of them.

One was the pair of clamp lamps, the other was the ceramic bulbs. I tested both lamps and bulbs, then set them aside for now. We won’t need to set them up for a while, yet, and one of them is meant to go into the cat isolation shelter. We have a larger clamp lamp that we used last year, but the bulb didn’t make it through the entire winter. When the budget allows, I should pick up another two pack.

The other package was a chainsaw sharpening kit. My husband, sweetheart that he is, sharpened the chain on the mini-chainsaw (battery powered pruning saw) for me. I’ll have to find the spare and get him to do that one, too, plus the chain for our larger electric chainsaw.

My husband likes sharpening things. 😁

After having the supper my older daughter prepared, I headed outside to take care of the eggplant and pepper bed. I removed the plastic that was surrounding it and rolled it up around a couple of narrow boards for storage. We might use one section to put around the catio for the winter, so for now, they’re being stored on the catio roof.

The eggplant leaves were definitely killed off by the cold, but I was surprised by how well the eggplants held out.

Even some really tiny Little Finger eggplant seemed salvageable. Only a few were too frost damaged to bother picking. There were only three Classic eggplant left to harvest, and all three had minimal frost damage on them.

That plastic did the job, even if it couldn’t completely protect the plants!

The Cheyenne hot peppers in the middle of the bed fared better. There were SO many peppers, and none of them were too frost damaged to pick!

I should have used the bigger colander! It’s being used for something else, though. When I brought them inside, they almost filled the basin I’d dug out of the old kitchen recently.

We don’t have the space to spread them out, so I guess we’ll have to string them and hang them. They should continue to ripen.

We most definitely don’t have the space for all the things that need to ripen indoors, though!

Which is a good problem to have, I suppose!

I’m just happy to have a harvest in October.

After this, the potatoes need to be harvested. Oh, and the red onions are still hanging in there!

The sunchokes should also be harvested, but they are still quite green and growing. The frost hasn’t really bothered them at all. I’m curious as to how well they did, after not harvesting them at all last year.

In a few days, we’ll be bringing the rest of the winter squash from the garage to the root cellar.

The root cellar is going to be pretty full this winter!

Not too bad, considering what a rough start the garden had this year. I’m quite pleased!

The Re-Farmer