As I was finishing up my morning rounds today, I spotted that kitten with the strange looking eye. I still can’t get close to it, but it was at some food, so it didn’t run away when I stopped to take a picture. I still had to zoom in on my desktop to see. This cropped image is the best I was able to get.
It’s still hard to see, but it looks almost like it has a cataract. Most likely, this eye got infected with the unusually bad strain of herpes that hit so many cats in our province this year. Whatever the cause, it was over with by the time this litter started showing up at the house.
I counted 36 cats this morning.
That critter cam we have set up in the sun room kept me busy last night. Those racoons are very persistent! They no longer really pay attention to my using the microphone to shoo them away.
Racoons make the strangest, snarling, piggy noises.
One of the first times I went into the old kitchen, I was surprised to find several cats in it! The outside door to the old kitchen from the sun room has a screen window. It’s old and torn and needs to be replaced. There is a window that slides down over it, but the slide locks have broken off, so the only way to move the window is to jam something like a screwdriver or a knife into the space, slide the latch and try and hold it in place while adjusting the window, so we just keep it all the way open.
Well, with the racoons making them rather nervous, the cats tore a hole in the corner of the screen in the door. The inner door was mostly closed, just to keep the cold out a bit, so they had no problem getting through.
Once the racoons were out, the cats left the old kitchen, but once they knew they could get through that screen, they kept at it! We tried closing the inner door completely, but that just meant cats got stuck between the doors. I opened it to chase racoons out again, and there were three cats between the doors! So we left the screen door open and closed the inner door. The last thing we needed was for the racoons to discover they could get through the screen and tear into the garbage bags stored in the old kitchen until we can finally get to the dump.
Which is open again today. With the battery replaced in the truck, we can finally get the garbage and recycling out!
We are going to have to do something about those racoons. Several times, it wasn’t enough to just chase them out of the sun room. I went outside and chased them out of the kibble house – then chased away the other three that were eating kibble under the shrine! From the noise, some were running under the storage house, so they weren’t going far. The time I chased away the ones by the shrine, I’d counted 8 of them altogether.
*sigh*
Ah, well.
One a completely different topic, my daughters are funny.
This is how they mark off the days on our calendar.
Every month, it’s something different. Sometimes, it’s geometric patterns. Sometimes, it will be a theme based on the month. Flowers in the spring, vegetables at the end of summer, that sort of thing. This was started off as marine life, then went with a food theme, and even some kelp!
I love the axolotl at the top. And the coelacanth! Two of my favourite sea creatures!
We had another cold night last night, for this time of the year. Temperatures dropped to 6C/43F. It’s coming up on noon as I write this, and we’ve warmed up to 21C/70F, with an expected high of 23C/73F. I made sure to get outside to do my morning rounds a bit earlier, as we got word that my brother and his wife were coming out with the repaired riding mower, and it was just beautiful out.
Of course, I was checking all the garden beds, and saw so many of these…
A lot of the purple corn seem to have exploded with tassels emerging, overnight! I had expected them to get much taller, first. I may have made a mistake in choosing pole beans to plant with them, instead of bush beans! 😄
I also was able to pick a handful of the wild-ish raspberries growing around the old compost pile. Until this year, I would usually find enough to nibble on a few while doing my rounds, but not usually enough to be worth picking. They’re just starting to ripen now, and I’m already finding more than before – and that’s just in this patch. There are still the raspberries growing wild in other areas that we can pick from.
I even found a couple of fully ripe pea pods to nibble on, and some Saskatoons. The peas will have more ready to pick soon. So will the Saskatoons, if we can stay ahead of the birds! Even the sour cherry tree by the house is starting to ripen.
When I later put the washed raspberries on the kitchen counter, I had a good laugh. My daughters can be so silly at times! Last night, my younger daughter made mint syrup for the first time, and set it aside on the counter to cool, with a Post It note to let everyone know what was in the bowl.
Her sister added to the note…
Too funny!
My brother and his wife came out in their truck; the riding mower fits quite well in there. Once it was out, he showed me the things he replaced and repaired, and some of the things he found. There was one wire connector, for example, that he found was completely off. Which means the mower blade could not be lowered. Even if the chain he replaced was working, we couldn’t have use the mower! I have no idea when or how that happened, because the last time I tried to use it was right after it had had the chain put back on. The chain immediately fell of, so I never got to a point where I’d have tried to engage the mower.
He replaced the seat. I didn’t even think it needed replacing, but he explained it to me. It seems there was some video of me he’d watch, riding around on the mower, and the bottom of my sweater was on the top of the mower – a part that spins! This seat has a back on it, so that won’t happen anymore.
He’d replaced the battery cables and the corroded connectors, and they are now covered with a protective grease. He also found a new battery holder. That was one of those things where I’d seen something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was. There was a vertical metal bar that was wobbling around. I knew it should be attached to something, but couldn’t figure out what. It turns out it was one of the bars that held a plastic piece that was supposed to be holding the battery in place. There was no sign of the plastic piece. It was held in place with a couple of nuts and washers. This is something that can only be seen if the seat and cover are lifted. How or when the plastic piece fell off, I don’t know, but it had to have been fairly early on, because I have zero memory of ever seeing it there in the first place.
After showing all the changes to me and my younger daughter, who’d joined us by then, he started it up and tested it out on the outer yard grass before driving it into the garage.
As for their mower, the best I could do was make sure the tank was full, have it out and ready for them to load, and clean it off. They were happy to get their mower back. It’s slightly narrower and can store in their garage – ours was too wide! It’s also too wide to fit between some of their trees, so they couldn’t use it for that, either.
I am so thankful that my brother was able to do all this for us. He’s so sweet!
Once done with the mowers, we did a “tour” of things. They checked out inside the shed with the roof that collapsed; there’s still quite a bit of stuff in there, and my brother even borrowed the wheel barrow so he could move some of it to the barn, so it wouldn’t be exposed to the weather anymore. He was able to identify some of the things in there, including some things that really had me wondering why they are there at all – they are for equipment that the farm has never had! My SIL found some ripe cherries to try out, and we all got to snack on Saskatoons. She’d never had them fresh off the tree before, and loved them. They planted a Saskatoon bush at their place, but it’s too early to be producing yet.
We talked a bit about some of the trees we need to deal with. The elm in front of the kitchen really needs to come down, but that is one for the professionals, as are the dead spruces closest to the house. The cost is prohibitive, though. My brother, being the sort of person he is, just sort of took off suddenly and went on the roof to empty the eaves toughs. While there, he checked out the elm tree, which has branches overhanging the roof. At the very least, those need to be cut back, so they don’t damage the nice new shingles!
Altogether, we had a wonderful time, wandering around the yards and chatting about what we’ve been doing, what needs to be done, and what we’d like to do.
They had another surprise for us, though that will be brought out later. They found themselves with an air conditioner they’d bought for someone else, but is no longer needed. It’s been used for only a year. They have central air and don’t need it themselves, so they will be gifting it to us. It’s not the kind that fits in a window, though. It’ll need to be installed in a wall, and near a 3 prong outlet. We have a limited number of those. My brother walked around the house, talking to my daughter about where to install it. It was decided there was no way to install it upstairs and be able to plug it in. It also can’t go into any of the log walls. Since we have cat proofed the living room, that’s where it will be installed. So we will have to do some rearranging in there… again… in preparation for that.
It won’t be the most efficient location for air conditioning, but it’ll still make a world of difference!
They are so awesome!!!
So now I’m looking forward to using the riding mower around the main garden area. I didn’t want to use their riding mower for that, because it’s so rough, I was paranoid about breaking their machine.
I think today would be a great day to finally get that done! Or at least started. 😊
He will sometimes follow me at a distance, when I do my morning rounds. I’ve been able to sneak a pet every now and then, while he’s eating on the cat house roof, but he takes off as soon as he realizes he’s being touched.
He and his long haired tuxedo sibling are among the oldest of last year’s kittens. I found out the girls have named them. Because of what their faces, especially their noses, looked like when they were kittens, the girls names them Adam and Driver.
My younger daughter has been slowly working on cleaning up the spring moisture mess in the basement for the last while, but also just being down there to stay in the cool.
Today, I found out she has been having fun with my wood carving tools, which I have not been able to use myself for quite some time. Her first experimentation was to finish off a fork I’d started some time ago, but stopped because the wood really sucked to work with. This is her second project, and her first made from scratch.
She make a shawl pin for me! Something to use to keep my reading jacket closed, instead of the hair pins I’ve been using.
I absolutely adore the teeny little frog she carved into the top!
What a fantastic job she did, and I absolutely love it!!
Since I was wanting to go to my mother’s early, my morning rounds were cut a bit short.
That and the ground was just too wet for all of my usual checks.
It wasn’t raining quite yet, but I decided to NOT put our transplants out. With all the pots in bins and trays to water them from below, the bins already had more water in them than they probably should have, just from what rain we got yesterday. Some of them are on baking trays, which are easier to tip and drain at least some of the water out. With the bins, we’d have to remove all the pots to be able to drain it, and I would rather we didn’t knock them about too much. Especially the pots that are made to be planted directly into the soil. When they get wet, they are a lot more fragile and basically fall apart.
So today, they stay indoors.
I did remember to grab the bag with what’s left of our wood shavings to put a light mulch where the peas were planted yesterday. After switching out the memory card on the corner cam, I popped through the barbed wire fence to check on things.
The most obvious was that the “road closed, local traffic only” sign is gone.
The stand is still there. Just the sign has been removed. The stand had already been blown to the side of the road by wind, heavy as it is. I guess they’ll come back for it later. I don’t think the road has been repaired, though. I think the water levels have just finally dropped low enough.
The area in front of where the corner cam is, is where I’d sown a western wildflower mix in the fall, and I was hoping to see if anything was coming up.
I’m still not sure, but…
… we have strawberries! There are quite a few, all around. We don’t mow this area often, but I’m sure I’d have noticed strawberries if I’d seen them before, and deliberately not mown there. There were a few other things growing that didn’t look familiar, but it’s hard to say. With last year’s drought and heat waves, following even more years with lack of spring rains going back well before we moved here, it’s entirely possible that our current wet conditions mean that things that had been dormant are now finally sprouting. When I had the chance, I looked up the description for the seeds I got. It has 16 varieties native to Western Canada, but only 7 are listed.
Well, we’ll find out eventually! I’m just happy to see strawberries growing there.
I then checked out that really bad spot on the road that’s close to us. It was very muddy, and it’s getting longer, but it still looked like I could drive around it on one side. It did convince me to use our van instead of my mother’s car. Her car is lower to the ground, and I didn’t want to drag her undercarriage on some of the muddy ruts left behind by heavy trucks.
The funny thing is, I got a call from my brother later this morning. He was at work but, he knew I planned to go to my mother’s. Having driven through that spot himself just a couple of days ago, he called to recommend I take the van instead of my mother’s car, because it’s so much lower and we wouldn’t want to catch anything in the undercarriage on those ruts…
I love my brother. :-D
I also wanted to leave early enough to hit the post office first. While at the store, I picked up another bale of wood shavings and some black oil seed for the birds. Then I remembered to ask about bale twine. We’ve been using some light sisal cord for most things, but I wanted something more durable. There wasn’t any bale twine in the store, but the owner went to check in the house behind the store (I guess inventory is stored there now; the previous owner used to live there), which gave me time to load the big stuff into the van. While I did that, a Canada Post van arrived. As I went back to the counter to wait, the post master brought a package to me that had just come in, even though she hadn’t had a chance to process all the deliveries yet! That was very sweet of her.
It was also sweet of the owner to go check for me, as she came back with a pair of bale twine rolls. I hadn’t realize that size came in pairs. I’d always seen the larger ones. I asked for the smallest size; only 2800 yards. :-D
We’ll be set for a while!
The package I got was our perishable stock order from T&T Seeds, including two highbush cranberry trees. As I was writing the above, my younger daughter came by to talk about them, and now she’s outside in the rain, transplanting them!
What a sweetheart!
Once I had everything bought and paid for, it was off to my mother’s, picking up some fried pierogi for lunch (it was too early for the usual fried chicken I get as our lunch treat) on the way. My mother was already waiting for her telephone doctor’s appointment! The appointment was at 11:50. She thought it was at 10:50. When she realized we still had about an hour for the call, she dove right into those pierogi – all the while telling me she should probably stop eating pierogi, because the last time she did, that night she had severe stomach pains. Which as never happened before, but every time she has some sort of physical discomfort, she blames it on whatever food she most recently ate. :-/
Then the phone rang. The doctor called almost an hour early!
It turned out to be a fairly short call. My mother’s back is feeling much better now, though she insists the painkillers she was prescribed, have not been helping her at all. The doctor asked the expected questions about if she had twisted it, lifted something heavy, or done anything that might have triggered it. He was looking at her Xrays and couldn’t see anything that would explain the pain. The way he described it, she just has a 90 yr old back! He mentioned arthritis, but I don’t think she heard him.
Ultimately, though, he wants her to come in, in person, as it’s been a long time since she’s been to the doctor. My mother was already talking about doing exactly that. Normally, she would have to phone the clinic and talked to a receptionist to book that – though I would have been the one to actually make the call – and he did start to say that, but then changed track and simply named a date and time. It worked for us, so in a few days, I’ll be driving my mother in for that.
Hopefully, using her smaller car instead of my van, though!
Once that was booked, that was it. We were done, and much earlier than expected.
So we finished our lunch, then headed out to run errands. My mother had three places to go, and was a real trooper about climbing into our van! Especially since the van has no hand grips, like her car does. Getting out was a lot easier, but I had to insist, each time we stopped, that she wait until I brought the walker around before trying to climb out. The last stop was the grocery store, and for that I go in and get a shopping cart and bring it over for her to use as a walker, instead.
Having looked at the weather forecasts, I took advantage of being there to pick up a few little things, too, just in case I’m not able to make the rest of our stock up shopping in the city. That should be tomorrow, but we’ll see.
You know what I didn’t buy today?
Tinned meat.
Because, WOW the prices have gone up!
Cdn$4.49 is currently US$3.54 Those tins are 156 grams, or 5.5 ounces Cdn$4.99 is $3.94 Those are 213 grams, or 7.5 ounces Cdn$6.49 is US$5.12, for 340 grams, or 12 ounces
Small town grocery stores tend to be more expensive anyhow, but this is almost double what I last saw them at.
When my mother was almost done her own shopping, I quickly went through the till with my own stuff to get those put away in the van first. While chatting with the cashier, the increase in prices came up. He told me the prices have been going up daily! This store is affiliated with a larger franchise, so they don’t control the prices, but the whole point of being affiliated with a franchise is to be able to get inventory at lower wholesale prices, so retail prices can be lower.
Which means the wholesale prices have jumped significantly.
Thankfully, my mother only needs to buy enough for herself, and with me there to help out, she got extra in a lot of things, to stock up. She didn’t even look at the meat section, though. She’s convinced herself that meat, especially red meat, is bad, but she’ll buy deli meats or sausages instead of fresh meat. *sigh*
The main thing is that she is now stocked up for the next week or so. With her back giving her grief, she might supplement with Meals on Wheels every now and then, too.
It was raining every so slightly when I left my mother’s, but I found myself driving through several areas of heavy rain on the highway home. I’m so glad I didn’t take the transplants out this morning! The gravel roads were just soaked, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more sections degraded until they were like the bad patch near our place. I messaged the family before heading out, and the girls were waiting for me at the garage with the wagon to help bring things in, since it was too muddy to drive up to the house to unload.
Just a few minutes ago, the girls came in – soaking wet! – to let me know they finished transplanting the highbush cranberry, as per the instructions that came with the trees. They planted them at the opposite end of the rows originally planned, because it has somewhat less water there, though they still had to shovel out as much water from the holes as they could. The holes they dug were mostly gravel, so the wheelbarrow of garden soil I had ready for something else was used instead of putting all the gravel back in the hole. The last of the bag of wood shavings I’d used to mulch the peas was used to mulch the cranberries. Hopefully, they will take root well enough.
It may be a couple of days before we can plant the sun chokes and sweet potato slips. The forecast says “light rain”, but it’s also supposed to be chillier than today. The sunchokes could probably handle it, but I’m not sure the sweet potato slips will. These are supposed to be a variety suited to our climate zone, but they’re still not a cool weather crop.
And we still need to get those potatoes in, but the package said not to plant them until temperatures are above 10C/50F. Looking at the 14 day trend, we won’t have overnight temperatures above that until June 7 – over a week from now! They will be under deep mulch, though, so that should protect them. I hope.
So much to get done, in a very short time, and the weather is not cooperating!
Well, we’ll do what we can. Little by little, it’ll get done.
The new stove is in, and it’s absolutely fabulous!!
Yes, it did also take a couple of hours to get it done, but not for why you might think.
First off, moving the counter turned out to be a lot easier than I feared. Once I moved the dining table as far into the corner as I could, I had enough space that I would not have to move any other shelves.
Once the drawers, which held most of the weight (especially the cutlery drawer!) were removed, I also found I didn’t need to empty the cupboards, either. Once I got the counter unstuck from where it has been sitting for so many years, there were no issues.
I admit, it was a lot less disgusting back there than I feared.
Also, yes. That’s a piece of toast on the floor.
Oh, dear God. I just realized.
There’s another piece of toast stuck to the back of the counter.
I have just returned from pulling the counter away from the wall and cleaning it out.
Those would predate our moving here. In fact, they probably go back to before my dad had to move to the nursing home. Which means they’ve been there for probably more than 5 years.
And yeah… it’s still actually less disgusting than I feared.
There were a couple of things I expected to find, since I was there when they fell behind the counter. I did not expect to find a new jelly bag.
I was wondering what happened to the second one from the package…
Then there was this.
This would go back to before my mom moved to the senior’s apartment she lives in now, so it’s probably been there for more than 6 years.
The counter itself turned out to be remarkably easy to move. It didn’t even catch on anything in the process.
Then it was time to shut off the breaker and move the old stove.
What the flash in the photo picks up, that I couldn’t see when I went to move the power cord, is that grease had dripped behind the stove, onto the cord.
That was really gross to handle. I couldn’t even put on the disposable gloves we would normally use. It’s so hot and sticky, I wouldn’t be able to pull them on. So I used paper towel to handle things.
Things were so sticky back there, it took more effort than it should have, to unplug the old stove.
*shudder*
Once the stove was clear, I peeled off the self-adhesive shelf liner that was used as a backsplash.
Then I was done. It may not have been a lot of actual physical labor to most things around – I easily did it by myself – but by this point, I was absolutely dripping with sweat.
The girls then took over and did the hard part.
Cleaning.
Those two are absolute saints.
That floor is just … wow. The difference between the part worn out from decades of feet, and the part under the counter, could not be more dramatic!
Clean up done, the girls got to use the time needed for everything to dry, to cool down and stop sweating. Then they put up the self-adhesive backsplash.
Then we finally unpacked the new stove from it’s box. After measuring the other counter, we found we did not need to adjust the legs – at least not before we put it in place. The daughter that was trapped in the kitchen used a level on the floor, and it definitely sloped downwards, away from the wall.
The height of the stove, without adjusting the legs, was exactly the same as the height of the counter, but a sloping floor would have to be accounted for. First, we had to plug it in and get it in place.
Here, you can see how the 4 pieces of self-adhesive tiles were placed for the backsplash. We will get a couple more and fill in the gaps, later.
Then one of my daughters was an angel and sprawled on the floor while her sister and I tipped the stove flat against the wall.
Which made it perfectly level!
I guess it’s good to know our walls are straight, if not our floors… :-D
That made it a lot easier for my daughter to adjust the leveling legs.
No more food sloshing to one side of the pot or pan when we cook, now!
Once everything was in place, back went the counter.
The new stove is the same width as the old one, but deeper, so it sticks out further than the other one did.
It also has a much larger oven, so we’re very good with this!
It’s going to take some getting used to having the controls in front.
Once the breaker was turned back on, the girls figured out how to set the time, using the 24 hour clock setting. Then they tested out the cooktop.
We are just entranced. I don’t think we’ve ever had anything so nice and new before. It heats up so quickly, it’s mind blowing! The larger front cook surfaces have two sides to their controllers. Use one side, it heats the full circle. Us the other, and it heats a smaller circle.
It also has no element in the oven, and the self-cleaning function is a safer, less power consuming, technological upgrade. We’ve had self cleaning ovens before, and never used them. This one, I actually will!
Best of all – no more sparks!
I am so glad this is finally done, and so thrilled with the stove itself.
Next thing on the list: replacing the taps and faucet in the kitchen sink. :-)
I’m really, really hoping someone installed shut off valves under the sink at some point. I’d really prefer not to have to shut off water to the entire house, just to work on the kitchen sink! :-D Not that I’ll have anything to do with replacing that. A much more able-bodied daughter is going to have to crawl under the sink. :-D I actually went back to pictures I took from the last time we had to go under there, when the drain on one of the sinks broke apart. None of them show enough that I can actually say for sure, and we can’t remember. We don’t really use the cupboards under the counter the sink is in. Only one drawer and one cupboard at the end is actually positioned in a usable space.
Well, we’ll find out soon enough.
Until then, we’re just going to try not to melt away.
I am happy to say that, thanks to my awesome, awesome daughter (and an amazing sale at Ikea), we have a new stove!
Still in it’s box, but we’ve got it! :-D
Before heading out this morning, I measured the old stove. We’re not too concerned about the dimensions, as the counters along that wall can be moved, if necessary. The main issue is actually the space between one counter along the wall, and the island counter the sink is part of.
I also emptied the drawer under the oven – something I have been avoiding since we moved here – and took it out to see what was there.
Besides a couple of toy mice, and the missing tube of After Bite.
And Cheddar. I had to sweep Cheddar out of the space! LOL
I missed a couple of things.
Also, that’s a tiny walrus that used to be among the many critters I had decorating the dash of our previous van. I don’t know how the cats got it under there!
Once we got the measurements, my younger daughter and I headed into the city, with Ikea being our first stop. We’d checked online the night before, and according to their listed inventory, we had two options, and the one we preferred had only 2 left in stock.
By the time we got there, found the displays and talked to a salesperson to check, there was only one left!
My daughter snagged it.
Now, on its own, the stove would have fit in our van, no problem. In its box, however, it was too tall, so it had to be loaded in on a side. Which is fine. The installation instructions that were available online included doing things like laying it down to remove the packaging on the bottom, and to adjust the leveling legs, so we knew that would be okay.
After that was loaded up and we went for breakfast… er… lunch… we headed to a hardware store. The new stove has the controls in the front, not the back, so my daughter wanted to pick up a self-adhesive backsplash. While we were there, I also found a new taps and faucet set for our kitchen sink. What was merely a drip when we first moved here is almost a constant stream. My daughters had opened it up, but could not see why it was dripping. The faucet is one that tends to get in the way when we want to wash our bigger pots, so I made sure to get one with a faucet of a different design.
That done, we made a quick stop at the pet store so I could get some more plants for our fish tank, then hit the grocery store, to get the last items we didn’t get after our big Costco trip, yesterday.
After several hours of running around the city, we could finally start home, with only a stop at the gas station, so I could fill a jerry can for our lawn mowers.
Once at home and all the groceries were in, we had to get that stove inside. My daughter and I managed to wrestle it out of the van and up the 2 steps in front of the main door, but then we had a problem.
The box was just narrow enough to fit through the doorway. Perfect, right?
Well. Except for the arm bar.
My other daughter put me on cat duty with the spray bottle, then the two of them tipped it on its side again, the wrestled it through. It was a really tight fit, but the hardest part was squeezing it through the door, while also lifting it over the bottom of the door frame, at the same time.
So here it is!
So excited!
We are not, however, installing it today.
It is about 3 inches too wide to fit into the kitchen. We are going to have to move the counter out and into the dining room.
Which will require moving the dining table into a corner, move shelves we have under the dining room window, pull the counter out (which will give me a chance to finally clean back there, and reclaim some stuff that has fallen behind it), take out the old stove, clean under that, put in the new stove, put the counter back again, then haul the old stove to the pile of stuff that we’ll most likely have to hire someone to haul to the dump for us.
This is going to be a huge job.
Until then, we can use the old stove to make supper! :-)
Oh, and the new faucet and taps will be installed tomorrow, too!
It’s going to be a huge job, but I am so looking forward to not having to use the old busted up stuff anymore!!!
Today was our day to go into the city to do our big shopping trip.
We didn’t finish.
We currently have more weather warnings. This time for heat!
I took the above screenshot shortly before 4:30pm. We might actually go a bit higher before it starts cooling down. 30C/86F is hot enough, but check out the humidex expected for Monday! 40C = 104F
We’ve been getting enough rain lately that our municipality has removed the burn ban, completely. No restrictions at all right now! We have lots that needs to be burned, but with the heat, who wants to be around fire right now? :-D
And we don’t have air conditioning in the van anymore, nor even working fans in the console.
It did make the trip into the city … interesting!
We managed to get to the Walmart and the Costco to stock up. After gassing up at the Costco, we were going to go to a couple more places. Then road construction and detours had us doing a route march through residential areas (why are they designed to be such mazes???) before we could back track, go back through the construction, and finally take a road that would get us to the street we needed, albeit at a different spot than I was originally after. By that time, I was done. We just went home.
Part of the reason I was okay with doing that is because my daughter asked for an extra trip into the city, which we’ll be doing tomorrow. She’s buying us a new stove! Since we’ll be in the city again anyhow, we can also pick up the rest of the stuff we need for the month.
Considering she is using her savings and had to quit her job, I am extremely grateful that she is willing to do this for us. The stove we have has only three working elements right now – we stopped using the 4th when we saw sparks every time we turned it on – and even those don’t heat up well, among other issues.
There isn’t much in the monthly shop we need to get, though. The freezer and pantry are stocked up again. We also have lots of cat food and litter – we’d run out of both, completely, as of this morning! The only things left are the items we don’t want to get in bulk quantities, like fresh fruits and vegetables, or ingredients we can only find in various ethnic sections of a grocery franchise we regularly visit now.
With the current heat wave, getting work done outside is going to be difficult. Unless I start getting up at 5am, while it’s still cooler (well; not so much over the next few days). I might just have to start going that. Which means, no more staying up until 2am!
The girls did a wonderful job in the basement, while I was baking bread! They got the big stuff moved back to the now-bleached and dry corner, the wire mesh over the counter to the unfinished bar, and a lot more cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing and vacuuming of cobwebs. :-D
Here are the before and after shots.
The wire mesh is up, and the more fragile items, and things potentially harmful to cats, are starting to be put into here. Eventually, a door of some sort will be rigged up, so the cat’s won’t be able to get in.
The pieces of Styrofoam at that long shelf were taken out of the windows. They were put in for the winter, before we moved here. They are cut to fit so snugly – and so much stuff was in the way – that we hadn’t been able to get them out before. Now, when the insulation around the outside of the house it moved away until next winter, there will be natural light in the basement.
Also, my daughters are hilarious.
Too funny!
Also, I guess I don’t have to ask what they found while cleaning.
I don’t want to know what the “mystery meat” or “soup” was. :-D
The table, shelves and cabinet are now all cleaned up and usable again.
They also started to haul stuff outside, including all the garbage bags.
A trip to the dump soon is definitely in order!!
Since I was down there anyhow, I checked out an old radio/record player that’s against another wall.
Except the record player part is gutted.
What about the radio? I was curious, so I stuck my phone around the back and took a blind shot.
Huh. Amazing. It hasn’t been completely gutted!
I have no idea what this is supposed to look like, but I’m sure there are parts and pieces missing.
For now, we have no plans to move this thing anywhere. I admit, for me, it’s more because I don’t want to deal with all the stuff shoved behind it.
The Re-Farmer 