We have ourselves another scorcher today.  I had hoped to mow the inner yard today, but I don’t want to risk the riding mower’s motor overheating in these temperatures.  So it will wait.  I was also thinking of doing the last bit of the clean up I had started doing around the storage house yesterday, stopping when it got just too hot to be working outside, but nope.  Not gonna happen in this heat!

Despite the heat, both cats are very cuddly.  DaBoy spends his nights upstairs, taking over the bottom of one of the girls’ beds.  You’d think, with his fur coat, the last thing he’d want to do is be in the hottest part of the house, snuggling up to warm feet, but he does.

At least his mom is doing it in the coolest room in the house; the master bedroom.

She was using my ankle and foot as a pillow.

Being the suck that I am, I was “trapped” for some time by the adorable fur ball.

My husband has been having a very bad pain day today, so he asked me to go into town to pick up something to help.

It’s a good thing he did.  Otherwise, we would not have known until we were heading out for his medical appointment tomorrow, that we were locked in.

My younger daughter came along with me, and when the girls are along for the ride, they typically go ahead to the gate to unlock and open it while I get the van and drive through, then they lock it up again.  This time, I drive up to the gate, and she’s still struggling with the gate.

The lock is a combination lock; the only thing we had handy at the time my mother asked us to start locking the gate.  Of the 4 tumblers, three weren’t turning.

We tried using tools.  We tried oiling it.  Nothing.  Those tumblers would not move.

Thankfully, we have another driveway, and that gate has a key lock on it.

This other driveway is not normally used.  I’ve mowed a path to it, because we still need to rebuild the barbed wire gate and just haven’t gotten around to it.  Right now, the lock and chain are the only thing keeping it upright and closed.  It’s a rough drive to the gate, the the driveway itself is overgrown.  I knew the path to the gate was clear, because I’d just mowed it, but we double checked the driveway itself to make sure there was nothing that would blow a tire on us or something.  It was good.

So when we got to town, our first stop was at a hardware store.  I picked up a new key lock, plus heavier duty bolt cutters.  It was funny as we went to pay for them.  The cashier joked about using the bolt cutters to cut a lock, then replacing it with a new one.  We told her that yes, that’s exactly what we were doing!  Then we explained that our lock was a combination lock, and the tumblers weren’t turning.  I added in, “Either the weather got to it, or someone tampered with it.”

Her response was, someone probably tampered with it.  When I commented that we live in the middle of nowhere, she just nodded and said, yeah; that’s where it’s most likely.  Then she told us about her brother, who has a trailer out in the sticks, and someone had broken into his locked gate and stole a quad.

An unfortunately reality of living in the sticks.  You’d think it would be safer, but people know that chances of getting caught are much lower, and the police are at least half and hour away.

I couldn’t see any sign of tampering on our lock, but unfortunately, I can’t rule it out.  For it to suddenly stop working like this, it actually seems more likely to be the cause than weather.

After getting the new lock and bolt cutters, we finished our errands, then did a bit of quick Pokemon Go.  We paused to battle a gym at the beach, sitting outside at a picnic table as we played.  Oh, what a lovely breeze off the water!

The temperatures were 28C, with the humidex putting it at 32C, but the lake it still quite cool, and it made for such a pleasant time outside.

We didn’t stay for long, though.  Once at home, we cut the broken lock off and put on the new one.  I’m going to have to cut copies of the key, so we all have one, plus an extra in the house.  I’ve kept the old lock and will see if I can find a way to open it up and see why it stopped working.

We did stop at the post office on the way home, and found a nice little surprise.  We got our reimbursement for our vehicle registration in our previous province.  It was enough to cover the cost of the bolt cutters, at least. :-)

For now, we keep cool inside.  Looking around in the basement, I found an oscillating fan that actually works, though it needs a major cleaning.  That’s what I’ll be working on, next.

While having lunch with my brother and his wife on the weekend, I found out about something I had been wondering.  In the old part basement, at the window that we used to throw wood through, is a platform.  I had no idea why it was there.  It turns out my brother built it to hold a fan.  There is a screen to replace the window that’s there now, and the fan was used for air circulation to help keep the house cool.  The basement doors would be left open to help cool the house down, but we can’t do that until we’ve cleaned up the new part basement so it’s safe if the cats get down there.  We talked about getting a cheap screen door in the short term, to keep the cats out until we can do that.  The door is a standard size, so we could actually do that.  Something to keep in mind!

My brother described the fan he had on the platform, and none of us could remember seeing it, so I went looking around today.  Which is why I found the oscillating fan.

No sign of the fan he’d built the platform for.  Like so many other things, it has gone missing.  Another thing that came up in conversation, since I’d mentioned my search for a pitchfork in the past, is that there had been about 6 or 8 pitchforks stored in the barn.  There is no sign of them, now.

It’s a good thing we are living here now.  Too many things disappeared while this place was empty. :-(

The Re-Farmer