Morning kitties, eye tests, and oops! I missed one!

July 24, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Gotta start out with the cuteness!

When I came out this morning, I found all four of the feral kittens in the grass around the catio area, like they were coming towards the house. The little orange one does come to the kibble tray under the water bowl shelter, and I’ve even seen it a bit closer to the sun room, but the others are much shier, so it’s great to see them inching closer.

The garage kittens, I notice, have been spending more of their time hanging out outside. Still right up against the garage, where there are things they can hide behind, but they seem to prefer being outside of the garage rather than inside it, now.

While doing my morning rounds I did my usual check of the garden beds. When I got to the potato bed, I spotted something strange. I guess a cat or something had been digging in the loose soil, and uncovered something I missed!

A single potato! A pretty big one, too! I don’t know how I missed that! 😄

Today I had my eye appointment booked. I was going to be getting the dilation drops, so my daughter came along to do the driving afterwards. Plans for after my appointment included possibly going to my brother’s to pick up her computer, that was supposed to be delivered today.

It wasn’t.

As I write this, and the tracking information still says it’s “in transit” and expected to be delivered between 9:30am and 1:30pm today.

It’s just past 10pm right now.

My daughter and I left early as I wanted to stop at a gas station before my appointment. I was going to go to one in the town my eye doctor is in, but when we got close to the gas station I saw it was mostly blocked off by the truck refilling their tanks.

So we kept on going and got to the eye clinic almost an hour early.

As we drove into the parking lot, though, we noticed a new ice cream store had opened in the same building. When I checked in, and was told that not only was I very early, but the doctor as behind and hadn’t even had her lunch yet, we decided to go for ice cream.

The place was so new, they weren’t finished setting up yet. The menu boards were dark and there was no seating inside, though they did have picnic tables outside. They did, however, have many varieties of ice cream for us to check out, and we got a couple of waffle cones. The tables outside were occupies, so we cross the street to a tiny park where we could sit on some large rocks in the shade. It was very pleasent.

By the time we got back, they took me in very quickly, for the initial photographs of my eyes they needed to take, first. I have the tiniest of hemorrhages in my eyes that the doctor is monitoring. I didn’t have to wait long before the doctor called me in. We started out by looking at the images, comparing back to when I first started seeing her, in 2023. There are slightly more of these tiny hemorrhages, but nothing has gotten worse, so we are still in “monitoring” mode.

Then she tested my vision. Much to my surprise, there is almost no change in my prescription. The tiny big of change in my left eye is so minor, there’s no reason to get new glasses.

Then it was time to dilate my eyes.

Those drops really burn!

After the drops were done, I was sent to the waiting room for a while to give my eyes time to dilate before being called back in. Then I got to get that bright light flashed into my eyes while she examined inside them. Of all the tests, that’s the one that bothers me the most. Not even the puff test bothers me much. I mentioned that and she told me that with some people, it’s the field of vision test that bothers them the most, while others have issues with the puff test. I told her about my mother and her macular degeneration, and how she got the eye injection. I told her, my mother handled them like a champ, but I honestly don’t think I could get that done! She asked me who the doctor at the special eye clinic in the city was that saw my mother. I told her, and she said she had heard very good things about him. She’s read some of his papers, and was quite impressed by them. I told her, he’s really excellent – and has a great “bedside manner”. He was always very sweet with my mother. I was happy to have a chance to share how good he was; if she ever found herself with a patient with newly developed eye issues beyond what she can do in her clinic, it’s that clinic in the city she’d be referring people to, and she would know that this particular doctor is highly recommended for more than his very impressive credentials.

Those tests done, the doctor wanted me to get one of the sets of pictures taken earlier done again, while my eyes were still dilated, since they’d be able to get more detail. After that, she wanted me to book another appointment for 6 months from not. That would put us in January, though. After talking about it, and our issues with travel in winter, which I try to avoid if I can, we decided that I will come back in October for a field of vision test – but no eye dilation! – and then come back for the dilation test again in 6 months after that. This way, my appointments will be spring and fall instead of summer and winter.

While at the counter, settling my bill (a whole $5.50, after the insurance coverage was deducted), there was a guy trying to book an appointment during a certain week. The other receptionist kept telling him they were going to be up north. Somehow, he understood that to mean they were fully booked, which they are – but the staff will all literally be up north. The receptionist I was with told me, she was the one who got them doing this. She mentioned having a lot of First Nations friends up north, and I completely understood. They just don’t have these sorts of clinics up there. They’d have to go south to the city. She said, that’s exactly it. It’s easier for a few staff at the eye clinic to be flown up north and see 200 patients, then to fly 200 patients to the city! And that’s just from one place. They now go up to visit 9 different northern communities throughout the year. It’s fantastic that they can do that!

By the time I was done, we’d heard from my brother that my daughter’s computer was not delivered. She and her sister had their own shopping list, though, which meant a Walmart trip. It would have been on the way home from my brother’s, but we went straight there, instead – after getting some gas, since the station was no longer blocked by a giant tanker truck! Since we were at the Walmart anyhow, I picked up a few little things as well, to tide us over until we do our first stock up shop, next week.

By the time we got home, it was past 5pm, and we were greeted by some very hungry kitties! My daughter took care of putting everything away, then making a heat-and-eat supper, while I quickly took care of the kitties.

The next two days are supposed to get really hot, so when things started cooling down this evening, I went out to give the garden a thorough watering. I plan to water twice a day, when it gets really hope. I am still holding out home that at last some things will start growing again, instead of just stagnating. It’s starting to look like all the red noodle beans are not only stagnating, but starting to die. I did spot one new sprout – a late germinating bean – and it’s all nice and green, like all the others were when they first sprouted. Now, they seem to be getting yellower, every day.

I wish I knew why. Even the extra seeds I had that got planted in the gaps among the peas that didn’t germinate, they’re looking yellow, so it’s not something specific to the beds. I’m at a total loss about it.

The winter squash, at least, seem to be recovering, though it’s unlikely there’s enough season left for them to develop fruit, even if they had an explosive growth spurt. The melons are just… not happening.

So furstrating!

I’m still tending them, just in case they recover. Who knows what will happen in the next couple of months.

Aside from all this, I have something good to share, and that’s how good I’ve been feeling. It’s only been a couple of days on the anti-inflammatories, and I can’t believe how pain free I’ve been. I haven’t even been taking the max dose I can “take as needed”. In fact, I even reduced how many capsules I cat at a time; I can take 2 capsules up to 3 times a day. I’ve taken 2 capsules, twice a day. This evening, I took just one. We’ll see how I feel overnight before I decide if I’ll take 1 or 2 in the morning.

I still have various pains, but the last couple of days have been the closest to being completely pain free as I can remember being in a very long time. Particularly when it comes to how much my body stiffens up if I’ve been sitting for a while, such as while driving, or sitting at my computer. I’m just blown away by how much difference I’m feeling, in such a short time!

Things are now winding down and I’ll be heading to bed soon. It should be interesting to see if half the dose will still be enough for me to be able to sleep without various joints keeping me awake with pain during the night.

I am so happy I thought to ask about trying the anti-inflammatories! What a difference they are making!

The Re-Farmer

Got to our medical appointments! Also, not eating there again. Ever.

July 22, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

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!

What a day this turned out to be!!!

The Re-Farmer

More kittens, and an update

July 16, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yes! We have transportation again!!!!

Before my friend arrived, I did have to play interference with an Eyelet, who wanted to follow me along. Which meant cuddle time!

It’s so hard to get pictures of those eyes, but I think I managed to capture their colour pretty well. They are SO white!

Eyelet kept trying to follow me down the driveway, which is not good, since I’m 99% sure he’s stone deaf. You can’t tell to watch him running around and playing, but I’ve gone past him with a lawn mower while we was sleeping and he didn’t wake up, so that’s a pretty sure sign!

I also spotted the secret kitties.

Can you spot the mama in the first picture?

These two kittens are the bravest of the four secret kitties – and the location of their “nest” in the outer yard is still very much a secret. Sprout is a good mama, but I do wish she would learn to accept us humans. When I got closer, she hissed at me and hid deeper in the tall grass. The white and grey ran off and hid. The orange on, however, started to run off, then came back. He’s getting curious enough that I think we might be able to touch him, fairly soon.

Sprout, meanwhile, just glared at me through the grass! 😄

As soon as I could hear a car coming down the road, I tucked Eyelet into the isolation shelter (which is open) and dashed to the gate before any cats or kittens could follow me! I did see Pinky’s two kittens in the garage, but they ran off before I could do more than confirm I was seeing both of them.

The drive to my mother’s town was a good time for catching up. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other.

I did, however, have to interrupt the conversation to ask her about the noise her car was making. She thought it might have something to do with a recall on her vehicle model, but she didn’t know for sure. She needed to get it checked but didn’t want to go to the dealership in the city she bought it from, because it turned out, they suck.

When we got to the garage, I paid my bill – $56 and change, after taxes, including 12¢ for the C clip he used to fix the break in the linkage. I asked about the part he’d ordered, and he confirmed that they had sent him the wrong one for some reason. Frustrating, but their mistake saved me about $300, and the truck is working fine.

Then, since we were there, my friend asked about her car. He asked some specific questions about the noise, then asked if she was okay to go for a drive. So while I got set up in the truck and put back a few things I’d made sure to take out before leaving it for the tow truck, they went for a run. The mechanic did the driving. Later on, my friend laughed while saying it was a good thing there were no police around at the time! He was wanting to see if it was the wheel bearings, as the sound should change while swerving.

The sound didn’t change.

She was really happy with him, though, and booked an appointment with him for next week. I happen to not have anything scheduled on that day, so she’ll be coming over to here, first, to pick me up. We’ll go for breakfast somewhere nearby, then visit with my mother.

Which is what we did after we were done at the garage. Well; breakfast for her, lunch for me. We had a great time catching up before heading over to my mother’s.

I didn’t call ahead to my mother that we were coming by. Normally, my mother doesn’t like surprise visits like that, but I knew she would be happy with this one. She has always liked my friend, back from when we first got to know each other in junior high. Even back then, she called my mother “mom”, just like I called her mother, “mom”. When my mother nearly killed herself causing an accident, years ago, my friend happened to be there to witness it, and took care of my mother afterwards. If it weren’t for that, we would have never found out what happened that day, since my mother basically lied about some of the details, and left lots of information out.

My mother was thrilled with the surprise visit. She was also just as tickled to be called “Mom” by my friend, still, after all these years.

I had showed the pictures I took of Eyelet this morning to both my friend and my mother. My friend has a one cat right now. She was telling me I needed to come visit her and meet her cat, and I joked about bringing Eyelet along.

Long story short, after her car is done at the garage next week and she drives me home, I will grab Eyelet and follow her to her place in the truck for a visit. We will see how Eyelet and her cat get along. If they get along, she might adopt Eyelet! She does know he is probably deaf. I do want to make sure she knows he’s probably got ear mites and worms, and has never had vet care. At least I’ve seen him use a litter box in the sun room, though, so he’ll figure that out rather fast.

Once done at my mother, we parted ways.

I’m now rather glad my sister wasn’t available to drive me today. It was so good to catch up with my friend, while getting the truck back. She has a very eclectic work schedule, so even for her to have today available at all was serendipitous. It worked out for her, too, since she is now going to get her own vehicle looked at with a mechanic/garage owner she really likes – unlike the dealership garage in the city she’s been having issues with!

It’s late enough now that I won’t be starting any projects outside, and will just do my evening rounds after feeding the outside cats. Right now, other than a potential grocery shopping trip for my mother, I have 4 days of pleasant weather to get work done outside. Finally! I have two large projects I’ve had to set aside for now, partly due to being pulled away for other things, and partly because I had to give my left arm time to heal from my fall. It is still bothering me, but at least I can do more with it. If it’s still a problem when I see my doctor at our rescheduled time next week, I’ll request X-rays. It’s been quite some time, and it really shouldn’t still be hurting like it does.

Oh, speaking of medical stuff, my daughter just came by to show me her wrist. The surgical bandage could finally come off today and, my goodness, the incision is healing quite nicely! Oddly, it looked so small while the bandage was on, but now that the bandage is off, it seems larger, somehow. They definitely needed space to evict Squidly.

So that is where we are at now. The truck is back and working, we might have Eyelet adopted out, and plans to spend time with my old friend again next week.

It’s been a very good day.

The Re-Farmer

Another break down! Good grief!

July 11, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Okay, before I get to the insane stuff, here is some adorable stuff.

First, a majestic Syndol!

I was watering the future food forest when I heard some scrambling. Syndol had climbed to the top of the old squash tunnel. He looked so very majestic, silhouetted against the sky, so I had to get a couple of pictures!

I also spotted some exploring kittens.

Even the shy ones are exploring the isolation shelter. I think that’s their sibling in the upper level, with Eyelet.

When doing the evening feeding, Colby has been getting brave enough to actually start coming back to the food bowls, while I’m still nearby. I almost touched him today! The shy ones in the photo, though, ran off even though I was across the yard from them still.

Speaking of feral kittens, while I was out, my daughter took care of paying the septic guy, then making sure the gate was closed after he left. As she was going past the garage, she spotted the mama that lives there, the white and grey kitten I spotted this morning, and a second kitten! She tried to get pictures, but was too far away, and the ran under the door as soon as they saw her. From what we can make out, the second kittens looks SO much like a Siamese!

We have got to get them closer to the house somehow. The mother just isn’t bringing them. At least they’re going outdoors!

As for my day…

Good grief.

Everything was fine when I headed out. I made sure to leave the gate open for the septic truck, so I didn’t have to stop to close the gate behind me. I got to my mother’s in good time, and did her morning med assist. Then we went over her grocery list and she made sure to give me cash. She just couldn’t resist making a nasty comment about how she didn’t want me using my card again. Somehow, she seems to be blaming the high cost of her inhaler on my using my credit card to pay for it. As if it somehow would have been free, if I hadn’t done that. Very confusing.

Speaking of confusing, I made sure to get pictures of my all my mother’s bubble packs. She has three “active” bubble packs, and one completely untouched one – and her secret stash bubble pack is now in the lock box, thankfully. There’s still one pack that has a single bubble in it with pills still in it from a day no one showed up for her morning meds. My mom made comments about how confusing it all was, as if it was the fault of the home care aids. It old her, it’s a mess because of what she’d been doing!

Once I was done going over her grocery list with her, I headed out to the truck to go to the store.

It wouldn’t go.

It started fine, but when I went to shift out of part to drive, nothing happened. The lever just moved up and down, freely, with no resistance.

My immediate thought was that something was wrong with the transmission. Which was a worst case scenario, really.

Whatever it was, the truck wasn’t moving.

After turning it off, then on and trying again several times, I finally went back inside, while sending messages to my family and my brother – I knew my brother was coming out to the farm this morning, but didn’t know when.

Once inside, I told my mother what was going on, and finished sending my messages. Then I told her I would just walk over to the grocery store, do her shopping then, when everything was put away, I planned to walk to a garage that was up the street from her place.

My mother suggested that I get them to deliver her groceries, which would have been done after the store closed, but I said it was fine. The store is just a couple of blocks away, and she didn’t have a large list.

As I headed out, I stopped at the truck to get a couple of hard sided grocery bags I knew would fit all her shopping. Of course, I tried the truck again.

Nothing.

Off I went to the grocery store and picked up my mothers items, then brought them back. As I going past her with the bags to get into the kitchen and put things away, she shoved a box of chocolates at me and said to take some. She wanted me to sit down with her and finish off the last few chocolates in the box. I said no thanks for now, I wanted to put the groceries away first. I always make sure to show her what I got, as I put things away, even if I didn’t have to make any changes to her list.

Then I sat down for a bit and did have a couple of chocolates while messaging with my brother and my family, and updating her, before going walking to the garage.

Which is when she asked me to sweep her floor.

Now, I had expected to do some housework for her today, but that went out the window once the truck stopped working. I needed to somehow get it to a garage and find a way home! We only have the one vehicle. I was still thinking “transmission”, even though, after trying to get it out of park a few times, it didn’t seem like the transmission was being engaged at all.

So I told her I needed to work on getting the arrange to get the truck to a garage.

She wanted me to sit down and “rest” for a while.

I really needed to get on this.

“So, you’re done with me, then?”

…

Yes, today, I am done and have to go!

I went to give her another hug before leaving, and she hung on to me, like she was trying to stop me from leaving.

Now, if this were someone else, I’d be flattered, but this is my mother. It wasn’t that she wanted my company or anything like that. It was because I had a problem to solve instead of paying attention to her and doing stuff for her. It was like some sort of test.

Which I’m sure I failed.

We said our goodbyes and I headed out. My brother suggested something to try first, so I did.

Nothing.

They were on the road to the farm, and said they would meet me at the truck along the way.

The cab of the truck was way too hot to sit in, so I dropped the tail gate and sat to wait for my brother.

It turned out that he misunderstood what I meant when I said the truck wasn’t moving. When he tried it himself, he figured it had to be a linkage problem. He then popped the hood and got me to move the lever while he watched inside. My SIL had to actually look around the hood to confirm that yes, I was moving the lever back and forth, continuously.

Nothing.

We now had to get the truck to a garage. My brother suggested I call CAA and arrange a tow, but I told him I needed to find out where to tow it, first. That’s why I wanted to walk over to the garage, first, so see if they would take the truck.

So they drove me over, with my poor SIL squished in the middle seat, and my brother went in with me. We talked to the woman behind the counter and explained what was happening with the truck. Her immediate thought was that it sounded like a linkage problem! I asked about getting the truck towed to them and she checked their schedule.

They wouldn’t be able to look at it until Wednesday.

Today is Friday.

My brother and I talked about it briefly and she suggested we try one of the other garages, in case someone else could look at it sooner.

So that’s what we did.

The other garage is one I’ve been to before, but not in many years, since we now go to a garage in the nearer town. The original owner sold the garage to one of his mechanics, but kept working his towing company, in the same location. When we got there, I was surprised to see the towing guy, but we talked to him about the truck and he looked at their schedule.

Tuesday. Maybe Monday.

Well, that was better than Wednesday!

So we agreed and he wrote my into the schedule. As we were talking about getting it towed, I found he no longer did CAA tows at all, but they would use the garage a couple of blocks away. He suggested I call CAA for the tow, since it’s covered, and that would save me $100.

That done, I started making the call to CAA while we drove back to the truck. The plan was for me to leave the keys hidden in the truck and then I would go home with my brother.

The call continued after we got to the truck and I had it on speaker phone so my brother could hear as well. We also had a hard time giving the name of the garage, as the guy couldn’t find it. My brother finally looked it up on his own phone and it turned out the only name that showed up was the towing company name, so that was the location they put it in as. The entire call was made extra difficult as we were suddenly getting some of the loudest traffic going by, ever!

As we arranged the tow, the guy told me I had to be with the truck when the tow truck arrived.

???

They haven’t required that in years.

Oh, and the tow would arrive at around 1:30pm

It was barely 11am at the time.

I told him, I can’t do that. I don’t live here, and I don’t have transportation. He said, if I wasn’t there, the driver couldn’t tow the truck.

My brother finally just said, we’ll be here, so I confirmed that with the guy.

I was thanked for my cooperation.

Uh huh.

Once the call was done, my brother suggested I hide the keys in the truck, then we would go back to the garage.

So that’s what we did.

Because of the trouble we had finding the place on the map, I made sure to look for the spelling on the sign when we got there.

The sign wasn’t there.

There was the towing company sign.

Looks like the original owner owns the garage again!

Which I’m good with. I liked him better.

So we talked to him about the call with CAA and what they told us about needing to be there when the truck arrived. Now, he used to do towing for CAA, so his reaction was a big WTF?

The towing company was just up the road, so he suggested we talk to the guy about it.

Meanwhile, I already received a text confirming the arrangement with the towing company, complete with reference number.

So we went over to the other garage (this town has one grocery store, but at least three garages!) and got to talk to the tow truck driver directly. We explained what CAA told us, and he was all, WTF? No, I did not need to be there. I told him where the key was hidden, and made sure he knew that the truck wouldn’t go out of park. That was useful for him, because they normally need to put the vehicle into neutral to be able to move it. I also warned him about the missing handle inside the driver’s side door. My brother laughed and joked, “you probably see that all the time.” The guy said yes, yes he did!

In the middle of all this, my daughter let me know when the septic guy came and went, she took care of paying him (with tip. The septic guy always gets a tip) – and about the kittens she saw! All was being taken care of on the home front.

So arrangements with the garage and the tow was finally done. We then squeezed back into my brother’s truck and drove to the farm!

My brother and his wife, meanwhile, were going to lend us a vehicle.

The one that’s stored in the barn.

Now, there are reasons they replaced it, but it still runs and they were pretty sure the registration hasn’t expired yet, either. My brother would get it out of the barn for me and we could use it until we got the truck back.

!!!

Once we got to the farm, they had to rush to get what they needed to do done – and now they had the extra job of getting the car out of the barn! A lot of stuff had been shoved into it and around it, in their hurry to get everything off their property before possession was turned over to the new owners.

My brother and his wife are the best. I don’t know what we’d do without them!

A few hours later, I was in my room folding laundry, my older daughter came in to let me know that she’d heard the storm door open and close. She went to check and found my brother had dropped some peas on the floor and left.

Peas?

Okay.

As we were talking, I mentioned that they were in a huge hurry, but were making sure to have the vehicle available for us.

Which is when I realized my daughter had said, keys. Not peas.

Auditory processing disorder can be really funny, sometimes.

Thanks to the new security camera my brother installed at the gate, I was able to check the live feed to see them leave. My brother drove the truck out with their trailer, and my SIL followed behind with the care they’d loaned us in the past. When she stopped to close the gate behind them, I was able to use the camera to say thank you again, and wish them safe driving, and hear my SIL’s response.

I love technology!

Not long after, I got a call from the garage.

He had a few minutes, so he got the truck in and took a look.

It was exactly what everything thought it might be. A linkage problem. The cable broke.

He was able to use a clip and put it together and it was working, but he couldn’t give any sort of guarantee on how long it would hold. A few months. A few weeks? Eventually, the part would need to be replaced, which would be the entire assembly. It has been a long time since he’d replaced one, but he thought it was around $400plus.

This is our only vehicle. We can’t take chances.

I gave the go ahead. to order the part, asking him to call me back when he knew how much the part would cost. Labour would be $100 an hour, and he estimated about 2 hours to replace it.

I was getting ready to go out and water the garden when he called back.

Was I good with an off market cable for $150?

Uhm… yeah!!!!

So that’s what he ordered for me. The total, with 2 hours of labour and taxes, would come out to less than the part if it came from GM.

So that will be done on Tuesday.

Just in time for my daughter and I to have our joint medical appointment on Wednesday.

Then my eye test on Thursday that she has to drive me home from.

I had completely forgotten about the medical appointments on Wednesday. If we’d gone with the first garage, we would have had to reschedule, and who knows when that would have had to be.

Thank God the problem turned out to be relatively minor and not the transmission!!!

Plus, my older daughter has said she can cover the cost, so it’s not a hit to our budget, either.

That’s a huge relief!

Meanwhile, I’m going to have to use my brother’s vehicle tomorrow, though I was planning to avoid it. It all the fuss, I completely forgot I was going to hit the feed store for more kibble for the outside cats.

I used the last of their kibble to do this evening’s feeding, and even had to stretch it a bit by making a big bowl of cat soup with it.

The cats didn’t complain, that’s for sure!

After all that, I finally headed out to water the garden and baby food forest, which I’ll write about in my next post.

On the one hand, this was a pretty stressful day and another expense we just don’t need.

On the other than, things couldn’t have worked out better, under the circumstances.

The problem didn’t happen until after I got to my mother’s, and I could still do her grocery shopping.

My brother happened to take the day off today so they could get their trailer set up and out for the rest of the summer, so stopping to help me out was on their way.

They still had their hold vehicle, it was being stored here at the farm, and it’s insured (though they did have to run into town to make sure of that).

We went with the second garage that could work on the truck a day earlier than the first one, which meant we don’t have to reschedule medical appointments I’d forgotten about.

I mean, if something’s going to go wrong, it couldn’t have happened under better circumstances.

As my SIL said, someone is watching out for me, and I totally agree – and give thanks!

What a day.

The Re-Farmer

What. A. Day.

July 10, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

… and it’s only 6pm.

What I was planning to do, after finishing my post this morning, was get a couple of hours a sleep in before my younger daughter and I headed out for errands.

Then my husband asked me if we had an extra box fan somewhere, because his just stopped working.

I remembered that we had one in the new basement that would normally be set up in the old basement window. We haven’t had to do that yet, this summer, so I was going to go get it. I was next to the door to the old basement, so I was going to go through that way to get it.

I didn’t make it all the way down the stairs, when I had to go back up and get my rubber boots.

Our septic was backing up the floor drain.

Now, on the plus side, it was just toilet paper, really. There was enough of it, however, to actually lift the floor drain cover up.

Once booted and gloved up, I opened the access pipe. It, thankfully, was not full of TP. So some water was still getting through, somewhere.

Thanks to the commercial drain auger we have, I was able to punch through the clog – right at the bottleneck, of course, – and get things draining. I didn’t even have to turn on the motor, and just used the drain snake. It’s rigid enough that I could push it through manually – and I could tell immediately when I got through, as what standing water there was, flowed away. I took the hose and ran water through the length of the pipe and into the tank, and nothing backed up. The septic pump did turn on, though, which was a good sign.

Nothing from the floor drain, though.

For that, I had to manually remove as much as I could into a garbage can. It wasn’t actually a lot, once I saw it together in one spot, but enough to be an issue for the size of pipe.

Once I got the bulk of it out, things started to flow and I could use the hose in the access pipe, flushing it back to the weeping tile under the new basement as well.

Then it was time to clean up the floor.

So that was a big, messy job though, thankfully, not as gross as it could have been!

While the water was flowing freely again, we did need to empty the tank. We normally would have done it in early spring, but too many other things messed up our budget. I was really hoping we could last until fall. When pushing the drain auger and the hose all the way through into the tank, I could feel how full it was. So, once I was done and cleaned up, I called the septic company and left a message.

He called back almost immediately.

He will be coming out tomorrow morning.

On updating the family – and assuring them that yes, we can use the toilet! – and telling them I’d have to take cash out from another budget, my older daughter came to the rescue, and transferred over enough to cover the bill. Including tip!

She was still on for getting Chinese food for my birthday, too.

What I think we need is to replace our entire toilet. We’ve already replaced the riser, but it just doesn’t hold a lot of water. The tank is lined, so there isn’t as much there, but there’s also very little in the bowl, even though I’ve set the dial on the riser to max. Meanwhile, there is some sort of leak in the overflow pipe, and we would have phantom flush, unless I allowed the refill hose to fill the tank directly, instead of through the overflow pipe. As a bonus, the tank would actually refill quickly, instead of taking forever.

There are other issues with the toilet, like no shut off valve, but I really like it. The bowl is 18 inches high, instead of the standard 16.5, so it is much better on the knees and back. My daughter and I did some searching and we found a 17″ one that has smooth sides under the bowl, so it’s easier to clean. That’s what we would replace it with, if we could. Price after taxes, though, would be heading towards $400. So that’s not going to happen any time soon!

Speaking of the price of things…

I got the estimate for replacing the door and frame in the entryway.

*sigh*

Over $4100, after labour and taxes.

The problem isn’t the pre-hung door. Even taking into account we are getting a more expensive one, with a window that can be opened. It’s the stucco. To remove the old frame, they’ll have to cut through the stucco to get it out. Then, once they’ve measured with the new frame, cut more stucco to size before installation can be done. Then they’ll hopefully be able to install the old storm door. This is not going to be a quick and easy job.

The estimate even says that, while they’ll try to be as careful as possible, there may be issues with the stucco breaking up, so if they have to repair that, it would be an additional cost.

That’s more than double what I though the cost might be. With how much it’s going to cost when the truck gets worked on through our insurance claim, plus so many other things sucking away at any emergency funds we had, we simply don’t have it. We might have to have another talk with the bank and try to come up with something.

When I told my mother that the door and frame needed replacing and why, she had asked me to let her know how much it cost. She would help.

There’s no way she’ll be doing that with the bill this high. Talking to my younger daughter about it and mentioning what my mom had said, she just laughed out loud. As she put it, that kind of money is “vandal” money, not “us” money. Our vandal would go to her for money, constantly, and she almost always gave in, and often more than the amount of this estimate. But to help us or my brother? Nope.

I don’t know what we’re doing to do, but we have 30 days to accept the estimate. After that, they have to do another estimate. Also, 1/3rd needs to be paid up front, before they start.

So that was another downer.

Things got better after that, though, as my daughter and I headed out…

Not without interruption.

Our phones started going off with emergency alerts. Due to wild wires, our province has again declared a province wide state of emergency. Evacuation orders are in effect in some of the reserves up north. Nothing in our area, though, so we are all right where we are. After pausing to check the fire maps, we continued on.

Our first stop was the post office, to get her birthday present: a new cane. My husband had ordered one, months ago, and it never arrived because the delivery company messed up. After giving on on that order, my husband and daughter went looking, and found this for her.

It is a Kommando Tactical Survival Hammer.

It’s also not a pretend novelty item. This thing is solid and functional.

Most importantly, it is a very comfortable cane for my daughter.

She thinks it’s absolutely hilarious, and she loves it! She started using it right away, and hasn’t stopped.

Cane acquired, it was off to town. First stop was the Chinese restaurant. My daughter went in to place the order, and then we were going to the grocery store while it was being made.

My daughter forgot her wallet.

We decided we could drive back to get it, giving the restaurant an estimated time it would take us, and then off we went.

Into rain with drops so big, I thought they were hail!

Sadly, no rain reached our place.

We got home, my daughter dashed in, and we were off again. Just in time for the food to be ready for pick up!

As I was catching up to my daughter in the parking lot, my phone began to ring.

It was home care.

*sigh*

Thankfully, they weren’t calling about tonight, but for tomorrow morning. Which worked out, actually, as I knew my mother would be needing a grocery shopping trip and probably laundry, etc. By the time I was off the phone, I was having to hold the doors open for my daughter, with the food!

That done, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things on their list – including a cake for me!

Thankfully, I remembered to go to a bank machine before we left town, so we would have cash for the septic guy tomorrow. I’ll be at my mother’s before he gets here, so I’ll be leaving the gate open, and have the cash ready for whoever is available at home to pay him, then make sure the gate is closed, afterwards. With how or vandal has been behaving, none of us feel we can leave the gate open for long.

That done, we could finally head home! Once everything was unloaded at the house, I started feeding kitties to get them away from the truck, so my daughter could park the truck.

She is fine with driving, which means I don’t have to reschedule my eye test next week.

There was still a lot of dry kibble out – the cats have not been eating as much, in this heat! – but I got the kitten soup out. As I was going to set the bowls out for the feral kittens, I spotted a pair of ears in the front window of the isolation shelter. Someone was in the hammock, but was so small, only the ear tips were visible!

It turned out to be Grommet.

Which means Grommet got the biggest bowl of kitten soup, all to himself!

That done, I left the girls to get things organized and called my mother about tomorrow. When I said I got a call from home care and that I would be coming in tomorrow morning, she started to get angry, but I distracted her by saying I could do her grocery shopping and laundry. It turns out she was already starting a grocery list, because her fridge is getting empty.

😄

We ended up talking for a while, and I did tell her about what our vandal has been doing. When repeating some of the things he said, even my mother was saying, how is that his business? Why does he care?

At one point, she brought up going to the police about it, and I told her I probably should, but we’ve had so much going on, it’s just really difficult. Out of curiosity, I brought up the septic backing up into the basement, which she didn’t even acknowledge years, and that we got an estimate about the door, reminding her about the front door and frame needing to be replaced. She just vaguely said that this was stuff to talk to my brother about.

Then she offered to call the police for me, herself. After all, this was happening at “her” place.

…

I told her, no. You aren’t directly involved. This is for me to do. So she left it at that.

Yeah. She’s already backed out of her offer to help with the door and frame replacement. I doubt she even remembers making it.

We ended up talking for quite a while before I could finally say goodbye and have supper. The rest of the family was already done by then! I hadn’t realized just how long the call turned out to be.

The food was delicious, as always. We got enough to feed us for a couple of days, at least! The less cooking we have to do in this heat, the better.

It’s now coming up on 8pm as I write this, and I’ll be doing my evening rounds, soon. Looking at the weather radar, we are still under severe thunderstorm alerts. There even seems to be a system heading our way that will actually pass over us, in a couple of hours. Which means rain, for a couple of hours! Maybe. 35% chance of rain.

So… do I water the garden again tonight, or leave it for the morning? We’re still at 25C/77F, humidex at 27C/81F, and we won’t be reaching comfortable temperatures until about 3am. The humidity is at 81%.

I’ll see how things look while I’m doing my checks. To be honest, I’m ready to crawl into bed right now. The heat has sucked all the energy out of me. Which is insane, because we’ve got AC now, and it’s so much better in the house than in previous years! My heat tolerance is dropping so much, as I get older.

This day has turned out to be all over the place. Tomorrow doesn’t look like it’ll be any better. While I’m at my mother’s, I’m going to miss my brother and SIL as they come out to take their trailer to somewhere else for the next while.

I need sleep.

The Re-Farmer

Morning cuteness, morning harvest

July 10, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

After what happened with our vandal yesterday, my older daughter joined me while doing my morning rounds. My own personal bodyguard.

Nothing was untoward; he didn’t come back and vandalize anything in the night. I’ve gone through the trail cam files. It was interesting to see that he had stopped at the end of our driveway with his tractor, when going in the other direction, before my incident with him happened. He didn’t actually do anything other than look like he was about to climb down, but then kept on going. It’s like he was just looking to start something, so the timing of my coming home as he was returning was an “opportunity” he couldn’t pass up on.

This morning, however, has been routine, other than extending my rounds to include more of the outer yard. My watering last night was thorough enough that I didn’t need to water again this morning. Which is good, because we never really cooled down during the night. We apparently briefly dropped to 20C/68F at about 6am, and immediately started heating up again. We’re supposed to hit 31C/88F or higher today. We’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings and, to be honest, I’d love a good thunderstorm right now. It’s really muggy out there. Everything seems to be passing to the north and south of us right now, but there is a large system making its way across the prairies that might reach us, maybe by tomorrow. We shall see.

The yard cats were already feeling the heat. They got their kibble and kitten soup – I actually saw Sprout eating inside the isolation shelter, though she ran off right away. I refilled the garbage can “heat sink” reservoir in the greenhouse, as it will actually help cool things down during the day. The luffa pots are on the ground, where it’s coolest, and they are heat loving plants, but I don’t want them to get cooked!

After filling the reservoir, the water in the hose was almost cold (our well water usually gets ice cold, even in the summer), so I refilled all the cat water bowls. The one in the sun room was filthy. I heard distinctive racoon noises in the sun room last night. When I went to chase out the racoon, I spotted the two baby racoons, struggling to hide between the lower window and the counter shelf. One couldn’t quite squeeze in after the other. So I left them be. They do leave the water bowls incredibly filthy, though!

I also put frozen water bottles in all the water bowls. By the time I finished my rounds, they were almost thawed out already. I will switch them out, once the previous ones have had a chance to freeze again.

While checking on the grapes before coming inside, I spotted an adorable Eyelet.

That top step to the storage house is a favourite spot for many cats!

With the heat, manual labour outside is not going to happen today. So we made other plans. My older daughter is treating us to Chinese food, as I have a birthday this month. We’ll be loading up on the proteins, as we can do the vegetables and rice ourselves. The girls are thinking of doing a stir fry, so I went out to gather a few things to include with some of the vegetables I harvested yesterday.

Just enough for today. There’s a variety of radish pods from both beds with them, plus a few of both types of sugar snap peas. Then I figured, why not? and gathered a few herbs. The plants aren’t very big, so I didn’t want to pick much. On the right is some basil, with a few lemon balm leaves, sage in the middle, a few sprigs of thyme – just one sprig of the lemon thyme, as it’s smaller than the English thyme – and then some dill fronds on the left. These are self seeded, so picking these was a bit like weeding. There are even some poppies coming up – most likely the “wild” double poppy that’s been growing in that area since before we moved here. I did try growing bread seed poppies in this location before, but when it comes to self seeding, it was the old variety that has been coming up, just like the dill has been, for years!

We’ll be heading out this afternoon, when the post office reopens, to pick up a package along the way. We had tried to get my daughter a cane for her birthday, ordering one from Etsy, but that never made it, thanks to the delivery company f*****g with us. My husband contacted the maker about it and they took our physical address, but nothing came of it and, as far as I know, my husband was never refunded the money.

So he bought another cane for my daughter, from somewhere else, and it came in yesterday. The store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays, so by the time my husband got the email notification, we couldn’t pick it up anymore.

We’ll pick it up today, then go to town to pick up the food order. My younger daughter will be coming with me.

Her surgical site is doing fantastic, as is her recovery. So fantastic, she’s had to wear a wrist brace, just to keep from using her hand too much. She has full mobility, and the pain of the surgery is far less than the pain of the ganglion. She is so thrilled to have finally evicted Squidly!

She also finally got the call back from the endocrinologist today, confirming an appointment in October. We’ve looked up the clinic address in the city. I am not looking forward to trying to find parking! It’s basically in the heart of downtown. There are plenty of parkades to choose from, but the streets are all one way and it’s always a hot mess of stupid traffic, a major transit hub and suicidal pedestrians. I used to work in the area, many years ago, and even lived across the river from there. So I still sort of know it.

Really not looking forward to driving around there. We’ll have to make sure to leave extra early, to give plenty of time to drive in circles to get into where we want to go.

I am, however, looking forward to this afternoon!

The Re-Farmer

sigh [updated]

July 9, 2025July 9, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I suppose I was expecting something to happen.

A couple of days ago, when checking our trail cam files, I saw our vandal. He was driving his quad and, at the sign cam, drove onto the space between the fence and the road, got off his quad and walked up to the fence, where the camera is. He showed off his colostomy bag, then got back onto his quad and drove off.

About minute or two later, he was pulled into our driveway where he got off his quad, went to the gate, then went back to his quad and left. If he did any more, it was in the 5 second gap of time before the motion sensor could be triggered again after recording.

It was creepy and weird.

It’s been too windy to get anything done outside, even without the high temperatures, so I grabbed our water bottles and went into town. Since I was there anyhow, I was able to get my husband’s prescription refills, so we won’t have a delivery, tomorrow.

As I was heading home and turning onto our road, I could see a tractor further down the road, moving slowly. I had plenty of time to pull into our driveway before it got closer. As I got out to open the gate, then go back to truck, it was close enough that I could see the driver – and it was slowing down.

It was our vandal.

Okay. He’s just going to drive by. No problem. I got into my truck and drove through the gate, then stopped to go back and close up the gate.

As I was putting the chain on, the tractor stopped at the end of our driveway, and our vandal got off. He had his shirt open and his colostomy bag hanging out. As he walked towards me, he grabbed it and sort of shook it at me.

My only respond, as I kept closing up the gate, was to say, “yeah, I know about that.”

He came closer and started yelling at me, in an absolute rage.

He had cancer. He was dying. Because of me. (I caused his cancer, apparently.) He’s dying. It’s my fault.

I pretty much ignored him and was walking away when he said that I put him in jail. I just paused and said, “I put you in jail?” shook my head and kept walking. As for as I know, he’s never been jailed because of my pressing charges against him after he vandalized our gate. Nor after I got a retraining order against him. The restraining order was just for a year and long expired, but he’s been staying away – until I saw him doing on the trail cam files a couple of days ago. My brother has had a few really horrible voice mail messages, where it was clear I remain the focus of our vandal’s hate, and he has only gotten worse, but he stopped calling and texting me, long ago.

He also started yelling about how I never needed to work again, and neither do my daughters. I have no clue what he was talking about there. All I can guess is, he’s seeing all sorts of stuff here at the farm, and he things we suddenly bought all this stuff, so we much have oodles of money somehow. It must be driving him insane, to see all this stuff and not be able to come here and help himself to it, like he did while my father was still living here, and during the couple of years no one was living here. He still seems to think he’s entitled to the property – or at least access to it, any time he wants – and everything on it.

As I ignored him, he started yelling and waving his arm, saying for me to call the police, call the police. I just got into the truck and drove away, so he got onto his tractor and left.

I pulled up to the house to unload, so I couldn’t see through the trees, but I could hear the tractor. As slow going as it was, it seemed to be on the road for a very long time. I wonder if he stopped at the other camera again or something. I’ll have to be extra observant when I do my evening rounds.

The whole incident lasted only a couple of minutes. It was pure chance that he was driving on the road with his tractor as I was getting home.

Now I have to decide if I want to go through the hassle of reporting the incident to the police. I’m not even sure which RCMP detachment covers our area anymore. It’s changed a few times. It’s not like they’ll do anything about it, but at least there would be a record of the incident.

*sigh*

Ha! This is what the WordPress AI image generator came up with for this post…

He didn’t come anywhere near that close to me, and the gate was closed between us, but… that’s hilarious.

Also, that’s not what a colostomy bag looks like but, whatever!

Gotta find the humour of the situation, somewhere!

The Re-Farmer

Adendum:

Well now.

As I was outside, watering the garden, I heard a quad coming up the road. With the lilac hedge providing a privacy screen, I couldn’t see who was going by, but I had my suspicions.

I was right.

Our vandal went up the road, then drove into our secondary driveway. This is completely overgrown with grass on the road side of the gate. When I realized the quad was in the driveway, I started walking over and recording video with my phone. After a while, I was able to see through the trees as the quad backed up into the road again, in a herky jerky sort of way. I could identify our vandal at that point. I think he was drunk again, from the way he was driving. Eventually, he got completely back on the road and kept on going, probably to visit at one of the other farms in that direction.

I went to the driveway and could just see where his tires had flattened some of the tall grass, so I could tell how far he went in, and how he was facing. He was checking out my brother’s stuff stored by the warehouse. Of course, our vandal has no way of knowing who the stuff belongs to. From his earlier ranting, he seems to believe they belong to me, which means – in his mind, at least – I’ve suddenly come into a whole lot of money or something.

Seeing this stuff and not knowing what’s going on seems to be driving him insane. Possibly literally.

Looks like my morning and evening rounds will now need to include checking on that gate, and my brother’s stuff in that corner.

*sigh*

Early morning outdoors

July 4, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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

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

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

The sky was certainly dramatic as I continued my rounds.

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

Where was I…

Ah, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*sigh*

Anyhow…

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

…

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

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

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

… and Tuesday’s.

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

What the heck is going on?

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

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

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

…

Okay.

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

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

Then she wanted to have a serious talk with me.

*sigh*

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

…

She managed to throw that one at me several times.

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

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

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

*sigh*

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

*sigh*

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Kitties in the heat, our two headed cat, and first appointment with the new pain clinic physiotherapist

July 3, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

As I write this, it’s just past 4:30pm, and we’ve surpassed our predicted high of 31C/88F and reached 33C/91F.

That couple of degrees makes a huge difference!

It could be worse; some areas to the south of us reported up to 40C/104F today.

It was a relatively cool 16C/61F when I did my morning rounds at about 6am. I even spotted the two feral kittens that are starting to show up regularly. No idea what’s happened to the other one or two that I saw.

When we got home from the physio appointment, there we were immediately greeted by Sir Robin, while Havarti and Eyelet remained splatted in the shade. Eyelet got up, waiting for their special food, while Havarti just lay there, unmoving – so I got a picture! The last image above was taken after everyone had a chance to eat their fill, and the full belly babies were back in the shade. Grommet was around, too; just not where I could get him in the picture.

Before we headed out, I spotted this on my bed and had to get a picture.

It looks like we’ve got a two headed cat in there! Ghosty and Tin Whistle had merged into one. 😄

That inside cats have also been splayed all over, but it’s a whole lot better for them, that’s for sure. Thank God for the AC my brother gave us. Between that and the living room, and a fan blowing the cooler air to there rest of the house, it’s so much better than previous years – and now my daughters have their AC set up in their upstairs “apartment”. It’s the fist summer since living here that the upstairs has been at all bearable. Even with that, they had to strategically place a fan to counter the wave of hot air coming up the stairs.

My husband and I got to enjoy the truck’s AC when we headed out just before noon for his appointment at the pain clinic. This was his first appointment with their physiotherapist, which made it more of a meet and greet. We met him last week, of course – he even remembered us a bit – but this was a more dedicated meeting.

It was a combination of interesting and encouraging… and not.

The interesting thing was, after asking questions about my husband’s specific issues and past treatment (the conclusion with the doctor, last time, was basically what we expected; he’s already tried everything there is to try, and there isn’t anything more or new they can offer him), he talked a fair bit about how things have changed in physio in more recent years. He talked about all the typical recommendations given out for decades; loose weight, exercise more, focus on core exercises, etc. simply haven’t been working. They weren’t helping people get past their pain or improve healing of injuries. There have been a lot of studies trying to figure out why, and they found many factors were at play. An example would be how they’d have two groups of people doing comparable exercises. Some people would report improvement, even though there was no measurable improvement in their condition. Others would report no improvement at all. When taking blood tests before and ever activities, it was found that people all had inflammation. The group that reported feeling better has less inflamation, the other didn’t – and the only difference was that the ones that reported improvement actually enjoyed the activities they were doing. The ones with the worst outcomes did not enjoy the exercises they were doing, and they had higher inflammation after their activities. Inflammation in general, it was found, played the biggest role in how people felt. It basically came down to individual body chemistry.

There were also things like how doing small amounts of activity more often was more beneficial that doing lots in a short time. He also talked about how misleading the “in your head” idea was. When he did talk about weight, he mentioned studies that found that when people enjoyed their activities, did them regularly without overdoing it, etc. they reported improvements, both physical and mental, with no change in their weights at all. This was something I appreciated hearing, since part of why my husband’s conditions deteriorated so much was because he started seeing a nurse practitioner (the only person available after our regular doctor went on medical leave and didn’t come back), she basically ignored the reason he as there – his back injury – but focused almost entirely on his weight. His blood sugars, too, but it all came down to his weight. Of course, in being the “good” patient, he just went along with it. For some two years. It was like she believed if only he would lose the weight, all the other things would magically go away. Of course, he never lost any weight at all in that time, and we finally insisted that she start focusing on his back injury. When he saw the spine specialist, the damage was too severe, and there was really nothing that could be done but give him stronger and stronger pain killers.

So having someone who knew to focus on the actual reason my husband was there, and not pet causes, was always a relief.

That was the encouraging part.

The discouraging part was, we already knew all this. This is really old news, even though most doctors don’t seem to know anything about these studies. I’ve been reading papers on this stuff for more than a decade.

After some discussion, a plan of action was worked out. My husband will start doing tai chi again (he used to teach it at one point), starting out by finding his limit, then maintaining the activity regularly, based on those limits.

Next month, we’ll be having a phone appointment with him.

As we were leaving and talking about it, my husband said he felt like the guy was a puppy discovering a new and fabulous toy and being all excited about it. Which is only because we were already aware of the stuff he was talking about already.

We shall see how it pans out.

Once the appointment was done, with a follow up telephone appointment booked at the end of this month, we headed over to the nearby Walmart to have lunch – breakfast, for my husband. My older daughter got quite sick last night, and hadn’t even been able to eat all night, while she was working. I made sure there was something she could eat before going to bed for the day! She sent me some funds to pick up heat and eats, which I did while my husband finished his lunch. Then it was off for home, with a brief stop at the post office. My husband had ordered more Tei Fu lotion for me, since it helps so much with the Charlie horses. He ordered three tubes, so the company added a freebie. It was a bottle of cordyceps, for “… energy, stamina, endurance and strength”. That one free bottle costs more than one tube of Tei Fu lotion! That’s quite a freebie!

I’m happy to be well stocked with Tei Fu lotion, though. I was running low.

When we got back, we found my younger daughter had the gate open for us, and was out hanging laundry in this heat! She’d done all their laundry, including bedding, plus my laundry, too! What a sweetie.

I planned to head out to water the garden this evening, but I’m not so sure about that right now. We’re at 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and apparently won’t be dropping below 30C/86F until after 9pm! Even the overnight low is expected to be 21C/70F

I think I’ll just do my evening rounds and go to bed much earlier than usual. I’ve been waking up as it starts to get light out, anyhow, so I may as well wait and do the watering in the morning. That way, I won’t be shocking the plants with cold well water. Something the winter squash and melons could certainly do with out, with how much damage they got from that one cold night a while back! We’ve definitely lost a few completely.

Not looking forward to doing my evening rounds this evening, that’s for sure! Stepping outside is like walking into a wall of heat.

Ugh.

The Re-Farmer

A quick (ha!) run down

July 2, 2025July 2, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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

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

I also spotted a garden friend.

What a unique looking frog!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The thing is…

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

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

They were empty.

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

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

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

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

The time stamp on the message was 10:01.

*facepalm*

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

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

My mother doesn’t remember that call.

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

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

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

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

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

It felt like it should have been much later!

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

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

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

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

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

Anyhow.

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

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