Wow, were the outside cats ever determined this morning!
When mixing up their softened morning kibble, I made sure to include the turkey stock I made for them, along with some of the meaty bits that fell off the bones. Maybe they could smell it because, even though I’d tossed out a scoop of kibble to distract them before I started mixing, I could hear them clamoring at the door. I got a daughter to stand by for cat herding duty while I tried to get out the door, and she was completely overwhelmed by the stampede before I could even get through!
As much of a crowd as there was in the sun room, some prefer to eat outside, and the ferals hover around, waiting for their chance.
By the time I got all the kibble divvied up around the yard, and topped up their water bowls with warm water (the unheated ones had a layer of ice on them), the kibble was almost all gone already!
Even on the cat house roof, there were just crumbs left.
You can tell the heat bulb inside is working – no frost on the roof above it!
I ended up giving them another light feeding later on, just to make sure the shier and less assertive cats had a chance to eat their fill, too.
I tried for a head count and got 40. Then I tried to count only the kittens, including the teenagers. I think I got 18 or 19, and I’m sure I missed some.
I sent pictures to the chat group I have with the new rescue. They are pretty taken aback by the numbers!
With the temperatures, I didn’t try to get anything done outside after my morning rounds. Instead, I headed out in the late morning to pick up prescriptions for both myself and my husband. We were almost out of kibble for the indoor cats, though, so I made a side trip to the feed store in my mother’s town. They were out of the brand of kibble I usually get, so I had to pick up the more expensive brand. It was still cheaper to get that, then either buy smaller bags locally elsewhere, or drive all the way to a Walmart to get some.
I then headed to our pharmacy, where I was able to pick up my husband’s refill, but not mine. They checked the system and it turned out my doctor hadn’t responded to their fax yet. In the end, I asked them to put it on their delivery schedule in a couple of days. Hopefully, that will be long enough for the updated prescription to come in.
I did remember to pick up some more potassium supplements. I’d run out a while ago and hadn’t bothered to get more. I think that was a mistake. I was wondering why I started to get leg cramps again. Not Charlie Horses, though those were threatening last night. Just weird leg cramps. They would happen any time my legs or feet got uncovered during the night. I’m guessing the temperature change triggered them, but it was very unusual for me. It was usually my calves that would start cramping, but my feet would, too, pulling at my toes, of all things. All of them. It’s the strangest sensation! The cramping would start, I’d pull my feet back under the covers, and they would soon stop.
I haven’t been doing any level of physical exertion that normally would trigger these, so I was at a loss as to why this was happening, until I remembered I’d run out of potassium a while ago. Adding the potassium to my vitamin regimen seemed to be the last thing to finally stop my Charlie Horses. That the cramping started up like this is enough confirmation of that for me!
Once done at the pharmacy, I remembered to stop at the grocery store at my husband’s request, then headed home. By then, it was about time for the outside cats evening feeding. After refilling the bin for the inside cats, the rest of the kibble went to the outside cats. Most of them aren’t old enough to have had this brand of kibble before, and they really seemed to like it!
Through all this, I was messaging with the cat rescue group, including the woman that’s going to be taking six cats from us. She’s going to be in the town nearest us to drop a cat off on Saturday, so we’ll be meeting her there, instead of further out on Sunday. We still have to work out a time, as she’s not sure what her schedule will be. As long as we have enough time to get the six cats and kittens into carriers, we can make it work.
Just a little while longer, and six cats and kittens will get their first step to finding forever homes indoors!
Once all the running around was done, I actually did get some work done outside, but that will be in my next post.
I woke up late this morning which, unfortunately, meant we had a lot of very hungry cats outside! I asked one of my daughters to simply pour a scoop of kibble onto the sun room floor to tide them over before I could do a proper feeding. Which helped, I suppose, but they were really eager for their morning food. That is when I mix up a small bowl of “cat soup” with just one can of wet cat food, and use that to soften the bowl if kibble, first. I also prep a smaller bowl of kitten soup that I leave on top of the freezer until later. I could hear so much commotion at the door, I ended up taking the bowl of softened kibble and going out the main doors, instead. Even if I had someone ready to herd cats out the door as I went through, I just didn’t want to risk stepping on a kitten!
Which means I filled their food trays and bowls in reverse, doing the furthest ones first and making my way to the sun room. I didn’t take long for them to hear me and come running. Which worked out so well, I’m thinking I might start doing this regularly!
After I finished putting the last of the softened kibble in the sun room trays, I grabbed Frank’s two remaining littles and brought them into the old kitchen to have their own kitten soup without having to fight off other cats. That also gave me time to wash their eyes open again. That done, I quickly popped into the sun room and back again. Frank wanted into the old kitchen and I let her, so she could have the special food along with her kittens.
It didn’t quite work out that way.
She was too nervous and went hiding and exploring around the old kitchen. I let her be and went to get the squeeze treats I bought a while back but never got to using, yet. I gave some to the kittens in their food bowl, then just squeezed the last of it onto the freezer near them, hoping Frank would be tempted. At one point, I was able to reach her and pick her up, but as I moved towards the freezer, she got more and more nervous. Before I could put her down beside her kittens, she panicked, scrambled when her feet touched the top of the freezer, sending food – and kittens! – flying. One of the kittens ended up falling behind the freezer, while Frank ran and hid under a couch.
The other kitten was still on the freezer and done eating, so I let it out through the screenless storm door window. Then I tried to get the kitten that was behind the freezer. It was sitting on the floor, just out of reach. I thought I could use something to push it from behind and get it to move out from behind the freezer.
Instead, it disappeared. It took me a moment to realize it had gone into the opening where the freezer’s guts are! After several attempts, to reach it, it finally came close enough that I could grab it and lift it out without getting tangled in things I could feel, but not see, in there!
The kitten got to enjoy a bit more food and squeeze treat, but Frank wouldn’t come out. I finally went out with the kitten, hoping that Frank would go onto the freezer and eat, while I wasn’t in there.
The kitten joined the cuddle puddle – and was nuzzling Sir Robin, trying to nurse!
I spent some time refilling water bowls, then opened the doors to the old kitchen, where I found Frank just inside, waiting. She never ate what was on top of the freezer, and was very eager to just leave the old kitchen! That gave me a chance to take the bowl of kitten soup and leave it out for other kittens to finish. There was still the glob of squeeze treat on the freezer, though. I ended up picking it up with my fingers, trying to hold it in my hand. It was messy, but I got most of it. I then went to the cats and kittens at the kitten soup bowl.
Two kittens I’ve never been able to get close to before where there. Both of them happily licked the squeeze treat off my fingers instead of running away!
Then they ran away. 😄
Meanwhile, I started getting messages from people with the rescue. This continued throughout the morning, and while I was in the city. Long story short, we might be bringing as many kittens over on Sunday as we can get into carriers! I’ll have to get some clarification, first, though. There seemed to be some communication issues. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I need to get that cleared up fairly quickly!
When I was done my morning rounds, it wasn’t much longer before my daughter and I started for the city. We left insanely early, to give ourselves time to get lost. 😄 I did look the place up on the map last night, plus I had Google Maps up on my phone to give directions. The route looked pretty straightforward, though what it was showing in the app did not match was I saw on my desktop last night. The address was the address, though, and I did remember the area fairly well, from my days when I used to work around there, and lived just across the river. I was not looking forward to trying to find the address, then finding parking. The area is mostly narrow, one way streets.
We did make a stop at my mother’s down along the way, though, to pick up a couple of energy drinks and some chicken and wedges for breakfast. From there, I got the app going to give me directions while I drove. My daughter was a sweetheart and passed potato wedges to me while I drove. I couldn’t eat my chicken while driving, but my daughter could eat hers, and I was more concerns that she got some food in her. She has a terrible habit of not eating, because eating most foods makes her sick. We have not been able to track down exactly why.
As we got into the city, I had the app up on the dashboard holder, but for some reason, it wasn’t giving voice directions. So my daughter took the phone so she could see the map and gave me the directions as we went along. I did remember the route from checking the map last night, but it’s been so long, I preferred having a navigation officer!
When we got to where the area, one of the first problems I noticed was not being able to find street numbers, anywhere. We got to where the app said the address was at, but couldn’t see anything to show where the clinic was. Specifically, a building tall enough, as the endocrinologist clinic was on the 9th floor.
With the one way streets, we drove around the block a couple of times, made slower because of construction, before finally spotting a parkade that didn’t have a “lot full” sign and headed in. We figured we could find the place more easily on foot. It couldn’t be far.
We then had the fun time of trying to find a place to park with enough room for our truck. The first four levels were all reserved parking. We finally got to a level that wasn’t all reserved, but the first side of that level was half roped off, apparently reserved for “game day”. We finally got to where it no longer was all reserved, and nothing was roped off, but the only open spots we saw were “small car only”.
Then I spotted two accessible parking spots.
My daughter and I don’t have our own accessible parking placards, but we do have my husband’s. We used it and finally parked.
My daughter actually forgot her cane at home, but we had three spares in the truck. After she grabbed one for herself, I decided to grab another for myself, just in case.
I am so glad I did. My left hip may be better after the steroid injection, but that lasts for only so long, when pounding concrete!
We had to back track to the street the clinic was on (with a gorgeous, castle-like cathedral as a landmark; I once had the opportunity to go there for mass, when I lived in the area, and can attest it’s as beautiful on the inside as the outside), then tried to find someplace with a street number. We found one, but didn’t know which direction we needed to go for the clinic. We were in the 300’s, and the address was in the 200’s.
We were about to wing it when I spotted a guy in a suit about to cross a street, so I quickly asked him if he knew where the clinic was, and which direction we’d need to go. He was an absolute sweetheart, quickly found the place on his phone (his app got it right, where ours clearly didn’t!) and pointed us in the first direction. We had about 3 blocks to walk, though part way along, the sidewalk was blocked off for construction (which was happening all over the place), so we’d have to cross the street, then cross back again, along the way.
The guy was so wonderful and happy about giving directions, he really made our day!
So, off we went, picking our way through construction at an intersection across from the area blocked off for construction (!!!) before finally making it to the final stretch. That’s when we could see a big billboard sign for a clinic. We couldn’t actually read all of it, because there was a tree growing right in front of it, but we could make out enough that it looked right. The entrance wasn’t on the street the address was on, though, and as we walked past the corner and could see the other side of the billboard, which wasn’t blocked by a tree, we realized it wasn’t the right clinic. We still popped in to ask for directions.
The lady pointed out the window to another high rise building across a parking lot.
A building with a huge painted on sign on the side.
With the name of the clinic at the bottom, in white paint on a pale blue background, barely readable.
We were very appreciative for the help.
Thank God we left as early as we did! My daughter’s appointment was at 1pm. We reached the front doors at about 12:40!
When we got to the 9th floor, the elevators opened up to a reception desk.
With things roped off in front, as if under construction. I think it was actually just to keep people from waking up to the counter, though.
There was no one at the counter.
We tried reading the sign, all it really had was arrows for endocrinology in both directions, and some doctor’s names. My daughter didn’t have a name for the doctor she was booked at, so we didn’t know which way we had to go. I spotted a cleaning lady, so I asked her which way to the endocrinologists. She asked which doctor we needed to say, and I told her we didn’t know. She said the staff (meaning the receptionists) were on lunch and would be back soon, so they’d be able to tell us.
We thanked her and went to a nearby waiting room. We couldn’t see the reception desk from where we were but, thankfully, could hear when someone was at the counter. My daughter and I – and several more people in the waiting room – promptly headed over to check in!
… and ask where a bathroom was. It was a long drive!
Of course, it was while my daughter was still in the bathroom that someone came out and called her name! I let them know. 😄
Even with all that, my daughter ended up at her appointment almost 10 minutes early!
She was out much faster than I expected for a first time appointment. She had requisitions for blood work, one to be done right away, the other to be done later. She had been told there was a lab on the ground floor, and she could get her first blook work done there, so that was her first stop.
When we got there and she was checked in, I asked about how long it would be, since the waiting room was quite full.
About 40 minutes was the answer.
!!!
It turned out they were short staffed today, and falling behind.
With time ticking on our parking spot, we decided it would be faster if we head out and stopped at a lab on the way home.
So, off we went to get the truck and head home, this time taking a route I was much more familiar with. It wasn’t until we got home that I had a chance to check why we were sent to a completely wrong area.
It turned out the address in my calendar for the clinic had two numbers reversed. The bizarre thing is, when I was looking at the address and directions on the website last night, I saw the address that was in my phone. Yet, when I looked up the clinic last night, I used the street address that was on my phone, and found it.
So weird!
As we were leaving the clinic, my daughter made a comment about how much she appreciated our new doctor, but she was going to wait until we were out of the city, and I didn’t have to focus on traffic so much (dancing around more construction) before telling me how it went.
We did make one stop along the way. Gas prices in my mother’s down had dropped to $1.269/L, but I planned to get gas in the city. I’d seen a station on the way in that had gas at $1.239/L and was planning to go there – until we passed a station with gas at $1.199/L !! I was just over a half tank and put $40 in, which filled my tank! I can’t remember the last time I was able to fill my tank from half for only $40!
Once we were out of the city, I remembered to ask my daughter how the appointment went.
Not well.
It was a very short appointment and I won’t go into detail, but the doctor was very rude and “just an old b***”, as my daughter described her. Long story short, though, by the time she told me some of the things the doctor did, my jaw was dropping. She needs to make a formal complaint. The doctor apparently made it clear she was disgusted by my daughter’s body. My daughter has hirsutism. She was there because of her PCOS. How does an endocrinologist not encounter a PCOS patient with hirsutism before? Or maybe she has, and just treats all her hairy female patients with hormonal disorders with disgust?
As if that weren’t bad enough, my daughter was manhandled, without explanation nor consent, in a way that is considered sexual assault. Sure it was a physical exam, but NO doctor is supposed to touch a patient like that without first explaining what they were examining for, and getting consent.
She also tried to test my daughter’s reflexes, but kept missing the tendon, then getting ticked off because there was no reaction to her hammering on my daughter’s ankle.
I really hope my daughter files a formal complaint, because… damn!
Along the way, we stopped in the town our doctor’s clinic is in, to do her first blood tests at the lab in the hospital. My daughter went in to get her tests done, while I stayed in the truck to finally eat the rest of my breakfast!
I’m glad we chose to go to a lab on the way home. My daughter was out so quickly – with two people called in ahead of her – that I was just finishing eating when she came back to the truck! Had we stayed at the lab in the city, we would have been just getting out and heading to the truck, unless they fell behind even more.
Her second set of blood tests can be done whenever she is able, but for this one, she is supposed to take a medication at 11pm, then get her blood tested at 8am.
I don’t even know if the local labs are open at 8am. I think they open at 9am. We’ll have to figure that out. Either way, she has a prescription to pick up before she can do the second test.
After the results are in, she hopes to get a telephone appointment only, or pay extra to get the results emailed to her. She does NOT want to go back to this doctor. I told her that she needs to let her regular doctor know about what happened so that, if necessary, she can get referred to another endocrinologist. Apparently, there’s a new clinic being built and there’s already a long waiting list for it, but she’s more than willing to wait, rather than go back!
For the most part, my daughter is just angry, but she realizes that a patient with, for example, a history of sexual abuse, a visit like this would have been very traumatic.
So glad that appointment is over with!
By the time we got home, it was late enough that the first thing I did was get the outside cats fed. No crowd trying to break through the old kitchen door during the evening feedings! Then I got changed and head outside, focusing on getting all the now-dry stuff from the sun room packed up and put away in bins with lids.
As seems to be the usual around here, it took longer than I expected, but I finally got it done!
The storage area is now organized and packed. Before winter, more things will be added for storage but, over all, it is done. On the cat side of the room (second picture) I still need to figure out where to set the second heat lamp, which has a lower wattage heat bulb, but that’s pretty much it. That cats really, really like the new set up! More and more of them seem to have figured out the litter boxes, too.
Finishing the sun room meant I could finally move the cat isolation shelter under the canopy tent.
That took some doing. The wheels kept sinking into the soil! That thing is heavy. What I would like to do, once I have the spare funds for it, is replace the wheels with something larger. For now, I put scraps of cardboard under the wheels to keep them from sinking into the dirt. I also have some handles I want to add to the front and the back, so it’ll be easier to move around.
Meanwhile, the cats can still use it where it is now.
Or that one skunk I have been finding, napping in the cat bed!
The box to go over the ramp door during the winter needs a bit of work. The overlapping plastic cracked when I set it on its side to attach the legs. I did try to set it where it could overhang the edge of the well cap, but it kept moving while I tried to work on it. Nothing some duct tape can’t fix. 😜 The panel in front, with a smaller opening for the cats to get through, was broken by cats panicking and hitting the edges while running out, so that needs to be trimmed. I also want to add a couple of pieces of the same material used for the legs to the sides, as handles to make moving it around easier. Right now, it’s hard to get a grip on it without damaging that roof panel even more.
It might be a couple of days before I can do the painting. Saturday would be perfect for it – a warmer day and, more importantly, a warmer night in the forecast. I might be able to get just one coat on before it starts getting too cold for wet paint to cure, but even that is better than nothing.
I’m going to be out and about a lot over the next while. Tomorrow, I’ll be at my mother’s for longer than usual. Along with her grocery shopping, I will be cooking up some of the chicken she was so angry at me for buying for her. I even remembered to ask her to take it out of the freezer tonight, so it’ll be thawed out before I get there. She’s also asked me to trim her toenails for her. I want to take a good look at her feet, as she apparently is getting an ingrown toenail, and that might need to be checked by a doctor. Of course, I’ll be doing some housework for her, changing her bedding, probably doing her laundry. Some of this stuff, my sister would normally come out on Fridays (my mother’s scheduled laundry time with the shared machines) and do for her. Since my mother gets her Meals on Wheels at noon on Fridays, I don’t plan to be there until about 1pm, so she has a chance to eat, first, and I can take the tray out to the common room for pick up, later in the week.
Saturday, I’ll be out again for a dump run, but that shouldn’t take long.
Sunday afternoon, I will be meeting to drop off cats near a Walmart, so if there’s any last things we need before Thanksgiving on Monday, that would be my time to get it.
Then I get to stay home for a while! The only appointment I have next week is a telephone follow up about the injection to my hip. I’ve got lots to do to prepare beds for winter sowing, as both day time highs and overnight lows will soon be cool enough to sow seeds but not have them germinate until spring.
Today was my day to get into the city for my appointment with the sports injury clinic about my hip.
I had a really rough and sleepless night. Not because of my hip this time, but I kept waking up and just generally couldn’t settle in. As dawn approached, I messaged my daughters, who both ended up awake all night, and asked them to take care of the morning routine for me, so I could try and get more sleep. I didn’t want to be driving to the city feeling the way I did.
They were sweethearts and took care of the entire morning routine for me, from feeding the cats to switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, to all the yard and garden checks.
My appointment was for 1pm, and I made sure to check the maps for the address. It turned out to be well within the area we normally do our not-Costco shopping. My landmark was a Shell gas station that seemed to share a driveway with the clinic, from what I could see on the satellite map.
Still, I ended up leaving about 2 hours before the appointment, even though it would take only a little more than an hour to drive there.
I am so glad I did!
As I was heading out and reached the first highway, there was an ambulance, lights on but no siren, that turned towards the north of us. A short distance away, I could see the vehicles of volunteer fire fighters at the fire station, and the fire truck was gone. On the other side of town, there were a couple of police vehicle, sirens and lights going, rushing through.
When I got to the next highway, I paused at a case station to pick up an energy drink and a sandwich (made by the restaurant in our little hamlet) for “breakfast”, and messaged my family. They kept tabs on the news, but nothing came up. Hopefully, whatever happened, no one was seriously harmed.
The highway I took into the city turned into the street that went past the clinic I needed to go to, so no turning or side trips needed.
Almost.
When I reached the Shell station, I went past and turned at the next entry, trying to find a street number, somewhere. I ended up driving around a building and, on the side facing the gas station, finally saw a sign over a door, saying “medical clinic and mall entrance”. That entire side of the building was all grey concrete, with a few service doors along the way. You really needed to want to find this place to get there!
I went in and the inside was just as bleak. Nothing but narrow hallways with lots of doors. The doors all had signs for different businesses, with some saying “employees only”. Eventually, I reached a door that actually had the street address on it.
It was a different address.
???
I headed back out and went into the Shell station, and asked the guy behind the counter. I gave the address I was after, and the name of the clinic, but all he could tell me is what his own address was and point vaguely further down the street.
*sigh*
So, off I went again and continued down the street until…
I passed another Shell station.
I’ve gone down this street so many times, but only really paid attention to where I needed to go. I had no idea there were two Shell stations so close together.
This one, however, had a very new looking building with a big sign and the name of the clinic. I swear, it wasn’t there the last time I drove this far.
I also drove right past it. Missed the entrance completely.
I was able to turn around and go back fairly easily but, again, you really had to want to find this place! The building may have been well marked, but the entry and exit lanes were very hard to see.
Then, there was finding the right door. It turns out this place has several related clinics in it, plus a pharmacy with a drive through (very unusual in our neck of the woods).
By the time I got to the right place, I was only 10 or so minutes early.
They did take me in a bit late, but not by much. The first person to see me was not the main doctor. He introduced me to himself with his first name only, telling me he was an orthopedic surgeon from China. Since he had just given me a very English name to us, I’m guessing his real name is hard for English speakers to pronounce! Much like my previous doctor who used his initials as his name.
This doctor started off by asking all sorts of questions to try and get a bead on why I was there.
By the time he was done, he seemed a bit perplexed. The thing that seemed to make it more difficult to figure out is that the hip troubles I’m having only really happen when I lie down to try and sleep. The more I try to relax, the worse the pain. It’s actually been a lot better lately, but it’s not gone away.
After a lot of questions and discussion, and looking at my file (for some reason, my most recent X-rays didn’t come up; just the report), he left to consult with the doctor my appointment was with. Then he came back with more questions before leaving again to consult with the doctor.
The doctor I was booked with swung by a short time later, apologizing for the wait (which I really didn’t notice as a problem) and said he just had to finish with another patient, and then he would be back to talk with me.
When he came back and we started talking, he was able to give me a diagnosis. GTPS. Greater Trochanteric Pain Syndrome. In looking it up, I can see why there was some confusion. My pain is really, really localized, and it happens only at certain times. My thought is that the anti-inflammatories I’m on, as low a dose as it is, helps with most of the symptoms that I would normally be feeling, or feeling more acutely, and now it’s just that hip joint that the anti-inflammatories aren’t enough to help with.
The other doctor had already given the area a physical exam, plus he also had me doing a number of range of motion tests. I had no issues with range of motion at all. During the physical exam at one point, he had me lying on my back, got me to lift one leg at a time, while he pressed down on my thigh. I was to resist his pushing my leg down as much as I could. He wasn’t able to push my leg down. When I got up from that, he commented that I had a lot of muscle.
The primary doctor got me on the table again, too, but he focused on finding the exact area in my hip to work on. That location would be the site for an injection. At first, as he poked and prodded, it was no big deal, but then he found THE spot. WOW did that ever hurt! Worse, he kept having to poke and prod around the area to find where the pain was the most acute.
Ouch.
That done, he explained the situation and that they could try a steroid injection. Which is exactly what my regular doctor and I were expecting. He wanted to know if I could come back tomorrow, or if I was okay to wait to get it done today. I told him, it’s a long drive, so I’m more than willing to wait to get it done today!
That decided, he had another patient to see before he could come back. While I was waiting, the first doctor came back to check on me and make sure everything was all right.
I didn’t have all that long to wait, really, and I was able to update my family on things. When the doctor came back, he made sure to go through all the usual disclaimers, then got me up on the table again. More poking and prodding to find the right location. He actually inserted the needle at one point, without doing the injection, and I didn’t even feel it compared to how much the poking and prodding hurt, when he hit that “sweet spot”. He ended up moving the needle to a different location before finally giving the injection. He told me it would take a while for the anesthetic to kick in, but there still might be pain in the injection location later on. I was also warned that there might be a “rebound” affect, where the area might actually hurt more before it starts feeling better.
He wanted to do a follow up with me in two weeks. Looking at my calendar, I asked if 4 weeks would be okay. In the end, he said he didn’t need me to actually come in, in person, and we could do a phone appointment in 2 weeks, instead. Which was just fine by me!
All in all, I was really happy with how things went. I now have a name for what’s going on with my hip and, hopefully, the steroid injection will make the difference. For some people, it doesn’t help at all, for others, it helps, but by how much is really an individual thing.
That done, I made the telephone appointment and headed out. I had a couple more places to go to.
My first stop was a Canadian Tire. I remembered to bring a paint sample for the colour of the isolation shelter. The exposed wood on it needs to be painted before winter, plus I want to pain the wind/snow break box that fits in front of the door when it’s open at its winter location.
Unfortunately, the piece of painted wood I brought as a sample wasn’t smooth enough. The colour matching machine “saw” it as a grey. So the paint person and I went looking at the colour samples and found one that was pretty close, and she tinted a gallon for me.
When she opened it up afterwards, though, we were both pretty surprised. The purple was a LOT darker than it should have been. She checked and double checked, and she had all the inputs and base paint correct. Yet the result was a darker purple than any of their samples!
After talking about it, we decided on another shade that we had been choosing between. It’s lighter, but not by much. When she tinted another gallon of paint, this one worked out and matched the colour sample. It’ll look a bit darker when dry, but will still be lighter than the original. It’s just for the cat isolation shelter, though, so it’s not like it’s meant for anything fancy. It’ll be close enough!
That done, I also picked up a large bag of kibble for the inside cats, some wood screws I needed, and a quick release hose connector repair kit. I also went looking and found a “calming” spray for the cats. We’ve got a lot of problems with some of them pissing outside of the litter boxes and other places – that’s why we go through so many puppy pads – which is likely stress related. I’ve been looking at pheromone diffusers, too, but all they had here was the spray. I decided it was worth a try.
I was able to pay for all this with my Canadian Tire dollars, so nothing at all came out of budget.
My next stop was the Walmart nearby. My husband gave me his card, a budget and a shopping list that included another bag of kibble for the inside cats. We should be set for the month for both inside and outside cats now. Along with a few grocery items, I ended up getting another box of moon cakes, very different from the last ones I got. The Autumn Festival is over now, so they were on clearance. I snagged a package of chestnuts, too, because they were also on clearance. I love chestnuts, but I seem to be the only one in the household that likes them!
With all this walking around, I did have some issues with my left hip after a while. Not pain, but it did feel… unstable. I used shopping cards as if they were walkers and was limping but, overall, the hip and injection site were feeling pretty good.
The shopping done, I was soon on my way home. By then, it was late enough that I asked my daughters to do the evening outside cat feeding, too.
When I got home, I was going to pull up to the house to unload, forgetting the vehicle gate to the inner yard was still closed. I don’t think we need to worry about that heifer getting through the outer yard fence again, and if he does, I really don’t think he’d wander into the inner yard, all by himself. Too far from the rest of the herd. I’ve left the gate open with that in mind. Hopefully, we won’t find ourselves with cows in the inner yard tomorrow! 😄
After everything was put away and I had my supper, I decided to head outside to walk around before it got dark. I brought out the hose repair kit and cut off the leaking and of a hose at the tap, only to discover…
I bought a quick release connector kit. Not a repair and quick release kit. I ended up having to switch hoses so I could still reach to water the winter and summer squash, until I can get the proper kit to replace the hose end I’d cut off! At least I was able to water what needed to be watered.
While I was outside still, my phone gave me a notification for a voice mail message.
It didn’t ring, of course.
Yes, it was home care again.
This time, it wasn’t to let me know about a cancellation, though! The person who was to see my mother for her bed time med assist was having vehicle troubles, and would my mother be okay if she came in almost an hour early, instead?
This time, the scheduler actually left a phone number, so I went in to use the land line to call back. I tried to listen to the message again to get the number, but I couldn’t access voice mail. Apparently, my number isn’t “registered” (I’m having no end of troubles with wi-fi calling!) and I had to go back outside to get enough data signal to listen to the message again and get the number. I had the land line handset with me and tried to call.
It failed. Twice.
Finally, on the third try, I got through.
It rang, then went straight to voice mail. The voice mail with the message saying no one would be checking the messages outside of office hours.
Why ask me to call back, if I can’t get through to a person, and any message I leave wouldn’t be listened to until the next day?
Still, I left a quick message confirming early visits to my mother was okay, then I called my mother.
After how terrible the call went the last time I talked to her, this one was actually almost pleasant! I had interrupted her evening prayers and was going to make it short, but she was talkative and kept me on the phone. I finally was able to end the call because the med assist was supposed to arrive.
That done, I was finally able to go back outside to finish my walkabout – this time with a flashlight, because it was full dark!
I heard some strange noises as soon as I came out. Noises from the shrive feeding station.
I chased away the skunk, then saw something moving in the isolation shelter.
Yup. That’s a raccoon in the cat bed! It had been at the empty food bowl when I first came over, then went to “hide” in the cat bed.
What cheek!
I did get it out, but it was really a moot point by then. There was no kibble left, anyhow.
Then I went and chased the skunk out of the sun room.
Once I was done my walkabout and settled at my computer, I got the live feed to the critter cam open. Since then, I’ve had to chase both skunks and raccoons out of the sun room, several times!
Greedy buggers.
It’s been getting really, really hard to get in and out through the old kitchen door into the sun room, lately. Frank’s three littles, plus a couple other really tiny kittens, all make a mad rush for the old kitchen door. They want in, so badly!! I really hope there’s a rescue out there than can take Frank and her babies. The new rescue we’re working with is putting feelers out, I’m told, so we’ll see.
Anyhow. That’s how the day went today. As I write this, I can say that my hip is feeling a lot better now. Tonight will be the first litmus test, though.
I might even be able to sleep on my left side and not wake up in massive pain for a change!
I’ve been feeding the outside cats a bit later every day, simply because it’s dark for so much longer. Which means getting through the old kitchen door with hungry cats and kittens swirling under my feet can get pretty dangerous! My younger daughter was on cat herding duty this morning. I can get through the door with the kibble bowl and avoid stepping on cats (barely), but I can’t also stop them from running into the old kitchen or close the door behind me at the same time! So I just try to get through as quickly as possible and start dropping food into trays to get their attention, while a daughter herds kittens making a mad dash through the door back out again until she can close at least one of the doors.
Later on, after the cats were fed, I’d done my rounds and I popped into the sun room to get some pruning sheers, I found this.
A great big bowl of kitties! Sir Robin seems content to be snuggled up with seven littles!
After the chat I had with the rescue, where they were trying to get an idea of how many cats we have, I did a head count as best as I could, of all the cats and kittens I could see. Usually, I try to count just the adults, as it’s so hard to spot the running around kittens at times. I think I got a total of 35, but I’m not 100% sure. I am sure that there were some “missing”, but I may also have counted some of the kittens twice.
We’re going to be warm for the next while, so this morning I uncovered the winter squash and watered the few things left to water, including the sunflowers, which are blooming more and more!
The sunflower in the first photo had been chomped by a dear. It sent up two new shoots, which then branched out more, so now it has four or five stems reaching upwards. All the flowers in the first photo are from that one plant.
The second photo is from the one that got flower buds developing at the base of almost all the leaves. I couldn’t fit them all in a photo what would fit on Instagram. “Only” eight blooming seed heads are visible in that photo!
The last photo is of the tallest sunflower. So pretty!
I still have no idea if we’ll get any viable seeds out of these. We have almost no pollinators around these days. At least not the flying types. This past smoky summer, with drought and heat waves, was brutal on everything. There are still other types of pollinators, but I don’t tend to see them on the sunflowers. We shall see how it works out.
I’m happy to finally see some colour on the Cosmos flower buds. There are so few buds at all! Most of the plants don’t seem to be developing any at all, even though they are quite tall and healthy looking, other than a bit of frost damage on a few.
I’m even happier to see so many of the memorial asters blooming. I’m pretty sure the plants are supposed to be much bigger (the nasturtiums were much smaller than normal, too), but they seem to be doing okay. If all goes well, I’ll be able to harvest seeds from them before the hard frosts hit.
Speaking of which, this is why I went back for the pruning shears.
Those are all the onion seed heads in the trellis bed. They were starting to open and I decided to bring them in to finish off indoors, so I don’t lose too many seeds into the bed itself. I found so many tiny onions while working on the bed in the spring, from seeds lost last year!
The other bowl is the driest of the carrot seed heads. There are still more on the plant that were quite green, so I’ve left them for now. We even still have some carrot flowers.
I’ve got quite a collection of seeds “curing” in the living room now. I need to settle in one of these evenings and package them up soon.
Once done outside, I came in for breakfast. I just sat down when I got a notification on my phone that there as a new voice mail. My phone never rang.
Yes, it was home care.
I’ll have to get back to that, though. I’m still shaking my head over the whole thing.
I was booked to drop off the courtesy van and pick up the truck for 1:30. I left early so I could fill the van’s gas tank (as required) and put it through a car wash (not required, but it was getting pretty covered in gravel dust already). I still got to the autobody shop quite early. As I was driving in, I could see a truck that looked like it might be ours, but I wasn’t 100% sure until I spotted my phone holder on the dash.
The truck was so clean, I barely recognized it!!!
I headed in to switch keys, sign what needed to be signed, and pay what needed to be paid. The final damage, including the “betterment” cost, insurance waiver for four days and the deductible, was $720 and change.
If this were not covered by insurance, it would have cost us almost $1500.
I’m glad I went with the bed liner stuff instead of regular paint. It looks really good, and I like that it has a texture and won’t be as slippery anymore. The inside of the tail gate was already coated with that, so it even matched that.
Then I got into the truck. Wow!!! They actually cleaned out the whole thing! The truck hasn’t been this clean on the inside since we bought it!
Once I was parked at home, I opened up the tail gate to check out the new cover. The latch to free it is much easer to find than the old one’s was. It rolled up nice and easy, and at the cab end, there are loops. Under the cover are straps with hooks to go into the loops. Waaaaayyyy easier to fasten then the buckles the old cover had!
That was about it for differences between old and new that I could see.
The trip to get the truck was almost enough for me to reduce my blood pressure after this morning.
The voice mail from home care was to let me know that the person scheduled to do my mother’s 9:30am meds today had called in sick.
It was past 9:37 when I was listening to the message.
She scheduler told me that they did find someone to cover it, but he wouldn’t be able to get to my mother’s until 10:30. She was concerned it might be late and wanted to know if I preferred to cover it myself. She wanted me to call back, but said she would schedule the 10:30 visit, just in case.
She didn’t leave a number.
Since my phone never rang (which means my Wi-Fi calling needs to be reset again), there was no caller display number. I couldn’t call her back. It would have been to give the go ahead for the late visit, anyhow, so I wasn’t too worried about it.
Being past time for her med assist, I was more concerned about calling my mother to let her know they’d be late.
When she answered, she told me she had just finished her breakfast. I don’t think she’d noticed they were late, yet.
I told her what the situation was and that someone would be coming, just at 10:30, instead.
She started making disparaging comments about how they call in sick so often.
Then she started going on about how we need to stop leaving her to strangers to take care of her. We need to take care of her. All weekend, and no one even phoned her.
…
…
I told her, my brother and I were AT HER PLACE on Saturday. It’s like she completely forgot that I came in to do her meds, grocery shopping and some housekeeping, just the day before yesterday, plus the surprise visit from my brother, and our taking her angel statue when we left, at her request.
When I told her that, she paused a moment, but just kept on going.
She was feeling sick. She’s been feeling sick for days. I tried asking her, sick in what way? but she got mad and told me to let her speak.
It turns out she meant her breathing, which makes everything else worse. So she was feeling bad overall, but blaming her breathing.
Then she told me she used the inhaler that I’d left out of the lock box for her, and was feeling SOOO much better, so she’d decided she will keep using the “puffer”.
…
…
I told her, she could finish that one off, but she no longer has a prescription. Because she’s been using it for a long time (more than a year) and it wasn’t helping.
Oh, but this one’s from the hospital, not the other one, and the one from the hospital works so much better.
I told her, they are the same medicine. The only different is how it’s released. Inside, it’s the same medication.
Oh… she says. Well I’ll still take it.
I reminded her that when I got her refill last time, she freaked out at me over how much it cost. I can afford it, she says (she could afford it before, too, but that didn’t stop her from yelling at me because it wasn’t free).
This went on for a while and I was starting to lose my patience. We do all we can to help her, and she keeps sabotaging our efforts. I told her I’d done a lot to get things the way she wanted, talking to the doctor, etc., and now she’s messing with everything again.
Ah, but this is my mother, so she took that to mean that I was complaining about how doing all that I do to take care of her is just too much for me. It really should be my brother doing all this, because he’s got the “biggest piece of the pie” (meaning, he now owns the farm). She has zero understanding that the farm is a burden for him, not a benefit, even with us helping as much as we can by living here, plus she thinks that transferring the ownership to him basically means he should be her slave, at her beck and call at all times.
My brother is on a flight across the country for his work right now. He works in internet security, at an international level. She has no clue how stressful or important his work is. All she wants is for him to be available to her at all times, and obey her every command. She’s been pretty blunt about that expectation, too. All because she transferred ownership of the property so it wouldn’t be part of the will anymore, in hopes our vandal would stop harassing her. Which he hasn’t. He just thinks she gave the property to me, for some reason. At least he can’t contest ownership of the property in the will, because she no longer owns it. Instead, she now thinks she owns my brother.
*sigh*
Then she started begging, pleading, for us to get her into a nursing home. Which we’ve been trying to do for more than a year, now. As she started that, she suddenly started talking about how Canada is turning into an African country, and this is a bad thing. I kept asking her, what does this have to do with being in a nursing home? She just kept repeating about Canada turning into an African country, then shifted to, it’s about her health. She needs to have people around her. She could start screaming.
???
Eventually, she was able to tell me that if she were in a nursing home and having troubles at night, she could start screaming, and someone would come to help her. But where she is now, she could start screaming, and no one would come (which has actually happened). I told her, that’s why you have the Lifeline. If you need help, push the button.
The entire conversation was very confusing and all over the place, with a lot more than what I’m including here – and all I was wanting to do was let her know her morning med assist would be an hour late.
I finally told her, again, I was calling to let her know her morning med assist would be late, adding that my breakfast was getting cold (sometimes, that works), and cut the call off. I just couldn’t handle the call anymore. There was no reasoning with her in any way.
While I was working on this post, I called and left a message with the mental health assessor that had come out this past Tuesday, mentioned that I had just found out the appointment had been interrupted by our vandal. I mentioned I had a phone call of concern just this morning and wanted to talk to her about it.
I do have my medical appointment in the city tomorrow, though, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to connect with her. If she’s able to call before I had to leave, that would be great (I did get a time frame). Otherwise, it might be a few days.
We are very much at a loss with my mother. She really does need to be in a nursing home or supportive living, but we’ve done everything we can to get her in. Unfortunately, she’s sabotaging a lot of our efforts by refusing the home care help she should be getting, like meal assists, dress assists, bathing assists. Not that I blame her for not wanting it, but if she can’t handle home care doing this stuff for her, how is she going to handle nursing home staff doing this stuff for her? Meanwhile, because she is NOT getting all this extra care that she actually needs, she’s viewed by the system as being too able bodied and independent to qualify for a spot in home car.
It’s the noon hour as I start this, and it’s already been a day!!! It feels like it should be evening by now.
Morning was pretty typical. I had to get my daughter to help me with getting into the sun room as kittens swirled their way through the door under my feet. My main focus is to not step on anything while holding the kibble bowl high so I can see. Once I got some food out, my daughter was able to put a food bowl of fresh kitten soup into the cat cage, was wasn’t able to take the old one out, as she was in a vortex of hungry kitties! By the time I got back from adding food to the different feeding stations in the yard, things had calmed down. My daughter and I had the chance to snag Frank’s two babies that had sticky eyes – one had both eyes stuck shut, the other just one eye – into the bathroom to wash their eyes until they could open again.
Then I could do the rest of my rounds and check on the garden bed. I’m glad we did water it last night, as the predicted storms and rain we were supposed to get yesterday fizzled out and we got no real rain at all.
The first photo above is of the blooming luffa. One by one, male flowers in different clusters are blooming. Still no female flowers. Not that it matters at this point. It’s the middle of September. Under normal circumstances, we’d have fully developed luffa gourds right now.
I had a surprise when I got to the trellis bed. The one sunflower seed head that was opening up has gotten much bigger, just overnight. This particular sunflower also has multiple seed heads, two of which just exploded open overnight! I tried to get a picture of all the seed heads that are starting to open along the stalk and did get most of them. In the third picture, you can see four along the stalk, but there’s a fifth one hidden by a leaf at the bottom that is also starting to open.
In the next picture, you can see our first aster flower bud has finally opened! The package of memorial seeds these are from had a mixture, if I remember correctly, so I expect different colours from the others I see forming buds.
In the last photo, we have our “just for today” harvest. There was a handful of beans to pick this morning, along with a single zucchini. I decided to go ahead and harvest the last of the kohlrabi. The remaining plants don’t seem to be forming their… bulbs? … at all. I also grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves.
There was one wonky purple kohlrabi that I decided to use right away in my breakfast, along with the chard leaves and stalks and a small Turkish Orange eggplant that I’d harvested previously. Those got stir fried to go along with some leftovers.
I didn’t peel the eggplant, partly because I’d picked such a small one. I did find the peels to be a bit on the bitter side.
My older daughter had used one to include in her stir fry last night. I’d gone to bed before she was done, so when I was talking to my younger daughter this morning, I asked how it turned out.
She told me, her sister had had to throw it away.
????!!!!
They may her lips go numb! They were the only new thing in her stir fry, so they were the only thing that could have been causing it. We’ve eaten eggplant before and she’s never reacted to any of them before, but those were the more typical purple varieties. The Turkish Orange is very different. Being so different is why I got the seeds to try.
I had no such reaction. I just found the skins bitter. Very strange! It does mean that we won’t be growing this variety again, though.
As I was setting down with my own breakfast, I noticed I had a phone message.
From home care.
Thankfully, it was NOT a call for me to come in. My mother’s med assist for this morning was scheduled for 8:50, and I was getting the message at past 9:30. The message was to let me know that there had been a last minute cancellation. They did find someone else to cover the med assist, but it would be much later; perhaps 9:45.
I called my mother right away to let her know. When she answered, she mentioned she was making her breakfast at the time, but didn’t say anything about no one showing up to do her meds. I told her about the message I got and when to expect someone to come. It was almost that time, so it was a short phone call.
That done, I finished my breakfast and was starting to upload the photos for this post on Instagram when my younger daughter came over to talk about what to work on today. She decided that this would be the day to do work on the yard and garden tools. So, for the next while, she got her supplies set up on the bench under the canopy tent while I gathered the various things that needed to be worked on. Some needing repairs, as well. It’ll probably take her a couple of days to work through them all.
After she was all set up (and we paused to wash kitten eyes again!) and working on cleaning and sharpening various cutting tools, I headed back in to work on this blog post. I got a message from my daughter who remembered there were some tools in the basement that needed to be worked on. Since I hadn’t started writing yet, I headed down right away to look for them. I knew I’d put all the ones that needed work into one container, but couldn’t find the container – in fact, I couldn’t even remember what container I’d put them in (it turned out to be an old plastic lunch box. 😄) – when the phone started ringing.
I was expecting an important call, so I started heading upstairs, promptly losing my slippers as I rushed up the stairs. The answering machine picked up before I got to the phone, and I heard my mother’s voice starting to rant at the machine.
I picked up the phone while she was doing that. It turned out she had tried to call my sister, first, and there was no answer, so when she called me and it went to machine, she was really upset. Was my sister gone on holidays already? She’s supposed to be gone for two weeks… I told her, I knew nothing about this. (This is the time of year for her church’s harvest feast – one of only two “Biblical” holidays they’re allowed to celebrate – but she’s not mentioned anything about it to me.)
My mother then started telling me how badly she was feeling. She was dying. She’d used the life line and talked to the responder, who asked her what she wanted them to do. She said, they kept asking what she wanted them to do until she finally told them to just leave her alone.
…
I told her, the proper response would have been to have them call an ambulance if she were feeling that badly!
She didn’t want an ambulance. She didn’t want the hassle (I can’t blame her for that!). She would need to someone to get her bag (her prepared hospital bag), her purse, and if she’s in the hospital “they” will come in and steal her stuff.
???
I told her that if she’s really feeling that bad, have the Lifeline call an ambulance (911 seems to be too much for my mother to grasp), and the paramedics could make sure to grab her prepared bags.
No, she doesn’t want strangers. She needs us (me and my siblings). She needs someone around her all the time. She relies on us…
I told her, we can’t live with her! What did she want me to do for her?
She had no answer. She just kept on about how poorly she is doing, how hard it is to do things, and her breathing. She needs someone with her. She needs to be in a nursing home.
But she doesn’t want to go to the hospital. She relies on us… then she started trying to rag on about my brother; he doesn’t call, he doesn’t visit. They’ve actually just gone through a rather scary health emergency with my SIL while she was out of province, but they don’t want to tell my mother about it. My mother handles such information very badly and can be downright cruel. They just got back home today and my brother immediately had to go to work to take part in a couple of important meetings. His job is in internet security at an international level. This is at a level even I have a hard time grasping, it’s so above my pay grade, so to speak. Not something my mother can even begin to understand. I did tell her that he was at an important meeting right now, but added that we did arrange to come out to her place on Sunday, as she requested. I’d forgotten to mention it when I called her this morning.
That mollified her somewhat. She told me that she would “be brave” and hold out until Sunday.
*sigh*
What I told her I would do is call the home care office for her town as soon as I got off the phone with her. I’d let them know that my mother’s condition is deteriorating. All the home care coordinator can do, however, is update the files with this information and send it up the chain. It’s another department that makes the decisions on whether someone can go into a nursing home or assisted living facility. I had to remind my mother about how shocked her doctor was that they hadn’t already approved her for a nursing home.
I wish I’d thought of it at the time, but if my mother did decide to go to go to the hospital, that might be just the thing that would finally get her into a nursing home, like she wants. That’s the typical way it works; a person ends up in the hospital with a broken hip or something, and only then do they get to go to a nursing home from the hospital. My father was an exception. He was getting home care three times a day, but his care included things like helping him use the toilet, bathing and even eating. A hospital bed was set up in the living room next to the window, so he could see outside, with a commode nearby, because he could no longer take the two steps between the old and new parts of the house to get to the bathroom. It was the home care aids that said he’d reached a point where they could no longer provide the care he needed, and that got him into a nursing home right away. Six months later, he passed away.
It is so incredibly frustrating. My mother should not be living on her own. She insists that she can still cook and dress and bath and toilet herself, when I really don’t think she should be. Every time home care offers what they can for her, she turns it down.
Among my siblings, none of us are able to have her live with us and give her the care she needs. None of us have accessible enough housing, even if we did. She is struggling, but refuses to make the decisions she needs to be making. She expects everyone else to make those decisions which, in many cases, they aren’t even allowed to make on her behalf. This is not a new thing; she’s always been one to deflect responsibility to others. It’s just gotten more extreme as she gets older.
Anyhow.
After telling my mother I would call the home care coordinator as soon as I got off the phone with her, my mother kept me on the phone for another few minutes. I finally had to get almost rude to get off the phone so I could make the call!
By then, it was past noon, and she was probably on lunch. I got her voice mail and left a message about my mother’s condition deteriorating.
That done, I updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to looking for the tools my daughter had asked for – and retrieve my slippers. The box I was looking for turned out to be on a shelf right at the bottom of the steps. I’d put it there specifically so it would be easy to find!
So I brought that out to my daughter and updated her, since all I was able to do was sent a message that I’d gotten a call from my mother and needed to make more calls.
Updating her also gave me a chance to catch my breath.
Now that I’m almost done this, I’ll soon be going into town to pick up prescription refills for my husband. I’m still half expecting a call, but if it hasn’t come in by now, it probably won’t. While in town, while I’ve got a strong data signal, I’ll have to try and set my phone up for Wi-Fi calling again. I can’t even get text messages right now. Which is a pain when I try to log into my bank account on my desktop. They don’t do it on my phone, but if I use my desktop, they always want me to input a code. Every. Time. I try to log in. The problem is, by the time the texted code gets to my phone, the log in session is expired. Sometimes, if I go outside and walk around the yard, it’ll come in faster, but I’m not always in a position to do that.
First, a follow up from yesterday. It took many hours, but the debilitating pain that had set into my left hip during the night did recede. I found myself able to walk normally again – not even a limp! – but my hip still feels very… unstable.
Which turned out to be a good thing, because my evening plans changed completely.
Yesterday evening, after a very warm day, I took advantage of being able to walk again, headed out and watered what’s left of the garden. I was back inside and settled down with my supper when I saw there was a message on the answering machine.
From home care.
The message told me they had a last minute cancellation and there was no one to do my mother’s evening med assist (they are just a few hours apart and typically done by the same home care aide). I was, however, assured that Saturday and Sunday were covered.
I got the message about an hour after it was left, since I was outside when the call came – and about 15 minutes away from when my mother’s supper assists are scheduled this cycle.
It takes about half an hour to get to her place, even if I just grab and go. I did quickly call my mother to let her know I was on my way, got my husband to tuck my supper into the oven, and headed out.
When I got there, my mother did try to do her usual snarky comments about, have they hired me yet? and the usual giving me a hard time for covering for home care again. I’ve still been in a dark place in the last while and I just told her, please don’t. I’m not in the mood for it. She paused a moment, then said, neither am I.
She did, however, have a good day. My sister had come out on her day off. Being a Friday, it was my mother’s scheduled turn for the laundry room, so my sister took care of that for her, as well as doing her dishes and light housework. It was much appreciated.
I helped my mother settle in with her supper to take her supper meds with, so I could then get her bed time meds ready, and she asked if I wanted a piece of her birthday cheesecake that I got for her. She had just a couple of pieces left, and had already had one with my sister. I agreed, and it gave me a chance to ask my mother about when she wanted me to do her grocery shopping.
It turned out she was already working on her list. I asked if she wanted me to come back tomorrow (which would have been today), and she said she had an appointment with her hair dresser – someone who comes to her apartment to cut her hair, which is really nice! – in the afternoon. As we were going back and forth I suggested, I could just do it right then. That way, I wouldn’t have to come back over the weekend. My mother was surprised by this, as she thought the grocery store closed much earlier. It was too close to closing for the pharmacy, though, so that got skipped. She only needed one thing there, anyhow, and not urgently.
So I did her grocery shopping and got everything put away. As we were chatting, she asked how I was and I mentioned I was out of sorts and explained a little bit about why. My mother had heard of the assassination but, of course, she only heard it from the TV news – “that guy from the states?” – and Canadian news has been lying about Charlie Kirk at every turn. Especially the CBC. So I told her who he really was. None of which was talked about on the TV.
I don’t think it’s possible to hate the mainstream media enough. I’ve had plenty of personal experience as to how dishonest and manipulative they are, over the span of decades, yet it still surprises me, just how bad they can be.
I didn’t stay too long, though, and was soon back home and having my supper. Then I noticed a notification on my cell phone.
I had a voice mail message.
My cell phone never rang.
After fussing with it for a bit, I realized the Wi-Fi calling had been turned off again – my phone keeps doing that on its own, and I don’t know why. I wasn’t able to get the message because there wasn’t enough signal. I couldn’t even go through the process of getting the wi-fi calling set up again, which required once again confirming my identity. I ended up having to go outside and wander around the yard, trying to find a strong enough data signal, to finally get it set up. Only then could I finally listen to the message.
It was home care.
The scheduler was very apologetic, but there was another cancellation. There was no one to do my mother’s morning med assist for today.
*sigh*
We were already planning to do a dump run, then a trip to a Walmart, and now I had to go to my mother’s again. The timing for it worked out, but it did mean almost another hour extra of driving.
So I called my mother again, thankfully getting her before she went to bed, and let her know I’d be back in the morning. She was not impressed. None of us are. My husband is getting right ticked off. He even went online to try and find somewhere to complain. What he did find were some forums with many, many other people in the same home care region we are in, having to deal with the same problem.
With the time scheduled for my mother’s morning med assist in mind, I managed to get to bed early and, happily, I did not have a repeat of what happened to my hip the night before. I still don’t know what triggered it in the first place!
I did my morning rounds early. There isn’t much to do in the garden, so things are done faster these days.
I did have to get a picture of that one Hopi Black Dye sunflower again.
Every day, more and more of it is actually developing seeds and they’re starting to bloom! I’m still amazed it survived the frosts.
In the next picture, you can see a huge cluster of tree mushrooms I found. I’d heard a cat commotion by the collapsing log building by the fire pit and checked to see what it was. It turned out to be The Grink, chasing after Sprout’s little calico (Sprout, once again, is AWOL). It was way up in a tree next to the log building. I did get The Grink away enough that the little one was able to get down.
Frank is such a good mama! And her littles are getting used to being handled. The one kitten who’s eyes have been getting stuck shut seems to be past the worst of it. No eye washing needed today!
The next photo is of, I think, one of Slick’s little tabbies. It was enjoying the cat bed in the catio that we moved over to lure the garage kittens to the house. They’re not using the catio since we moved it, but the littles are enjoying it! The garage kittens still seem to be using the garage as “home base”, but I am seeing them near the house a lot more often now.
Last night, I was hearing that we were supposed to have a dense fog this morning. It wasn’t too close around the property as I was doing my rounds.
Then I started driving to my mother’s.
I had to pull over at one point, just to take pictures, about a mile from home. When I was driving between the trees, there wasn’t much, but as soon as I cleared the trees and reached fields, it was like driving through a wall!
Keep in mind with the above photos, that the camera “cleans up” the shots, so the fog was actually denser than it appears in the photos.
Very moody.
Also, by the time I was heading out, the sun was fully up and we had bright sunshine!
Once I got onto the highway, it was even thicker, to the point that I had to reduce speed due to lack of visibility. I did eventually catch up to a shadow that turned out to be a car. Then we’d go through a section of highway bordered by trees, and the fog would disappear and we could see just fine. Then we’d enter a section surrounded by fields, and it would be like driving into a wall of fog.
Then… it was gone. Such a stark delineation!
When I got to my mother’s she was really struggling. She was still in bed and really didn’t want to get up. I can’t blame her! She’s had a sleepless night, too.
Yesterday’s grocery shopping trip had missed a few things. Particularly milk. It wasn’t on her list and I’d considered getting some anyway, but my mother has specifically said she had milk. I figured my sister had brought her some. It turned out my mother was thinking she had enough to last until I came to do her grocery shopping… on Sunday.
The day she told me she didn’t want to have her grocery shopping done on anymore…
She was so out of sorts, though, one minute saying she needed milk, then asking me to check and see if she needed milk (she did), and not to get this other thing that got missed, or maybe something else or…
I finally told her to just enjoy her breakfast, and I would get her some milk. The rest could wait.
Then, as I was heading out the door, I hear “and apples!”
😄
So that was a short shopping trip.
That done, I headed home where my daughter had things ready to start loading up the truck for the dump run. When we got to the pit, we were happy to see that they had finally cleared the wall of garbage at the pit edge. There was room to turn again!
Once we were finished there, we continued on, first making a stop at a gas station in town, along the way. The price there was still $1.409, whereas in my mother’s town, it was $1.419 With all the extra driving, I was down to a quarter tank. I really try to avoid letting it get below half. I asked for $50 in gas, and it didn’t even get me to 3/4 of a tank. By the time we reached the Walmart, I was at half a tank again.
*sigh*
I had a short shopping list for myself – mostly more cat food – while my daughter had a list for herself and her sister. She couldn’t find everything on it, though, so we decided to go to a regular grocery store further on. As we were driving to it, we passed an independent gas station.
The price on their sign was $1.349
After we finished at the grocery store (my daughter still had trouble finding one item!), I made a point of stopping at that gas station again and added another $30.
The price on the pump was $1.299
That $30 sure went a lot further!
From there, we could finally head home, unload, and finally settle in. Today was originally supposed to be just a dump run day, and instead I was out for most of it.
It’s been hotter today than yesterday, and it just now starting to cool down for the evening, so I’ll be heading out to water things again before bed. The next three days are supposed to be as hot, or hotter, than today, so still no need to cover garden beds yet. After that, the temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit. Enough that I will probably keep the winter squash bed covered both day and night. I’m still amazed that was have any squash developing at all, so I want to give them every change to mature!
Getting outside and being productive has also been good for my overall mood, too, so the more of that, the better.
First, some cuteness that is actually from last night. I went out to do my evening rounds before it got dark when I spotted this before I opened the door.
Adam and Slick were both nursing babies on the sidewalk. Two mamas, seven kittens. Slick has a litter of five, but they’re not all there. I think only one, possibly two, are there. I don’t know how many kittens Adam has, but I’m thinking around four. Being a créche mama, I have no idea which are actually hers. She is content to nurse any kitten. I’m pretty sure at least one of those kittens belongs to a much more feral mama that I’ve seen nursing a kitten in the sun room, once or twice.
I wonder if my evening walk has anything to do with how things turned out?
It’s just hit 9:30am as I start this, and it’s already been a very rough day.
I was awakened this morning by pain. Something’s gone wrong with my left hip. Maybe a slept in it wrong or something, I don’t know. I tried using Voltaren on it and took an extra anti-inflammatory and tried to get back to bed. There was no position I could lie in that alleviated the pain. When I finally tried to sit up, after about an hour or more, I could barely move. I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t stand. Moving hurt in one way. Not moving hurt in another.
I finally managed to get up and get moving, hoping that if I walked around, it would help, as it often does when my joints stiffen.
I can’t say that it worked.
Getting dressed was a challenge. Just try and put on pants or socks while sitting down, but not being able to bend over far.
We have a cane with feet on it, so it can stand on its own, and I had to use that while feeding the indoor cats for the morning.
That done, I went into the old kitchen to start on the outside cat food. In the mornings, I still mix up a can of wet cat food with ground pumpkin seed and water to make a “cat soup”, then mix it into the dry kibble and leave it to soften. I couldn’t use a cane while feeding the cats their softened kibble, so I was hobbling around on my own.
Yes!!! In the first photo, that’s the smokey garage kitten we’ve been trying to lure closer to the house, at the feeding station on the well cap! This is between the house and the kibble house. She even was at the doorway to the sunroom when I first came out of the old kitchen!
It was around this time that the girls realized I was having issues, and they came out to give me a hand. My older daughter got my husband’s walker out for me, and I used that to continue my morning rounds. It’s heavy duty enough that it can handle the rough terrain in the main garden area.
I took my time doing my usual checks, stopping to sit on the walker along the way. It almost wasn’t worth taking the break. The act of sitting down and then standing up was the most painful.
When I came around to the house, I found my younger filling the water bowls, and she came to join me. As I was wheeling around the portable greenhouse to return through the sun room, we spotted the kittens inside. There was a fluffy grey tabby snuggled up against the protective collar around the bigger luffa – that explains why I keep having to shift the collar back in position! There was a tiny white and grey on the ground next to the other luffa’s pot, and Colby was pretty posing on top of the heat sink’s cover.
One of these days, I hope to get an accurate head count on the smaller kittens. They run and hide way too much!
As for me, it’s been about half an hour and I think my hip is feeling a bit better. My daughter made a breakfast for me that would protect my stomach from taking another anti-inflammatory (I’m still taking far less than “allowed” with them), and she was able to get some Voltaren over places I have difficulty reaching on my hip and lower back.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to accomplish much outside, today!
I pulled all that I could find. We have these all along the shoulders of our gravel roads. In one of the nasty voice mail messages our vandal left on my brother’s cell phone, he said that there was red bartsia in the second quarter section our renter is taking care of. That quarter is just used for pasture now, though it also has trees, a pond and marshland. Our vandal still thinks the property should be his, so he was having a screaming fit on the message about how I should get my [insert vile and disgusting insult] daughters out there with lawn mowers to get rid of it.
If you follow the link about the weed, you’ll note it specifically says, “Mowing is not reccomended.”
With the arrangement made with the rent, they’ll be the ones dealing with it. This stuff is parasitic with grasses, and can do real damage to pastures. Cows can’t eat it.
We can’t do much about the roadways, but we can keep it out of the areas we are responsible for, at least! It’s bad enough that we’re dealing with creeping bellflower and creeping Charlie.
While uncovering the garden beds this morning, I was happy to finally see some colour among the peppers.
That was this morning. This evening, I went looking and did find another with some colour showing at the very tip. Also red. No sign of yellow or orange in any of this mix of peppers.
I didn’t start any projects outside this morning, as my daughter and I had consecutive appointments with our doctor early this afternoon. We got some Dairy Queen coupons in the mail, so we left early enough to have lunch in town before continuing on to larger town our doctor is in (I just double checked; it’s not large enough to be considered a city, yet). They weren’t very busy, and my daughter got called in for her appointment right on time. Mine was half an hour later, and I got called in on time, too.
All I was there for was to go over my X-rays. With my hand/wrist, it was confirmed that I did NOT break anything in my fall. It just still hurts at times. More my shoulder than where I landed on my palm, even after all this time. Not that anything could have been done about it, if there had been a break. It’s been quite a while since my fall!
It was my hip that I really wanted to see about. According to the lab report, there is actually very little change since the last time I got X-rays done, some five years ago! The arthritis and bone spurs aren’t any worse.
I told her about the issues I’ve been having. I told her, with the anti-inflammatories making everything else so much better, when it comes to things like my hip, the pain is more acute, now that there isn’t so many other aches and pains muffling it. She was nodding her head as was saying this. It’s very typical! I described the issues I was having with my hip, using last night as an example. As soon as I lie down, it starts to hurt. Eventually, I had to get up and take some pain killers, which didn’t really do much. I got up again and used some of the Voltaren lotion, and that finally did the trick. Only then could I sleep. It’s been getting more painful, though at least I can now put weight on that leg when taking the stairs again. When I mentioned that, she suggested it was due to increased activity. I told her that was very likely, since I’m outside working and winterizing while the weather is good. She just laughed and said, “making hay while the sun shines!” Yup. She gets it!
She said that it sounded like tendonitis, so she has referred me to a sports injury physician. This would be in a clinic in the city, but one that is straightforward for us to get to. It would be decided by the specialist, but she felt that getting a steroid injection to the hip might be helpful.
She was writing up the referral as I was leaving. I was done my appointment a whole 6 minutes after it was scheduled! My daughter had already booked her own follow up appointment a couple of months from now and was waiting for me in the truck. No extra trips to the pharmacy or anything, but we did make a quick stop at a grocery store and a gas station before heading home. I was looking to get a flat of 30 eggs, but chokes at the $15 price tag. It was actually cheaper to buy two 18’s, instead. Weird.
After we got home, I was soon outside, starting with the evening feeding of the yard cats. I’ve actually reduced the amount of food I put out, because there are so few adult cats around these days!
Frank is such a good mama, and her kittens are adorable. When I checked on them this morning, one kitten had one eye stuck shut, which was easy to address. Another had both eyes stuck shut and I ended up bringing that one into the bathroom for an eye washing. This afternoon, that kitten’s eyes were both stuck shut again, so we’ll have to keep close watch on it.
After I took the video that’s after the still shot, that tuxedo pushed its way under the smaller kittens, hunting for nip! Only then did Adam move, pushing him away with a back leg so he’s stop messing with a kitten that was still attached.
As I was scrubbing out and refilling water bowls, I spotted some kittens in the portable greenhouse. Now that they’ve discovered it, they really enjoy staying in there – even when the thermometer in there was reading 50C/122F!!!
I’m not sure if the little tabby in the first picture is part of Slick’s litter or not. They usually stick close to junk pile, shrine feeding station and isolation shelter, but there’s one little tabby that comes to the house and even into the sun room. I think it’s actually from another litter, but I really can’t tell.
That black and white with the blue eyes in the next photo is a stunner.
After tending to the yard cats, I started watering the garden. There was just enough water in the rain barrel to do the old kitchen garden beds. The Turkish Orange eggplants were drooping! Everything else was looking better, but those Turkish Orange eggplant seem to be really sensitive to all sorts of things. They can’t handle cooler temperatures well, and they seem to not handle heat very well, either! Or at least the dryness that comes with the heat. They’re watered just as much as the peppers, which haven’t shown any drooping at all. We reached a high of 23C/73F, but our low is supposed to be 9C/48F, so I’ll be covering them for one more night. According to the 10 day forecast, the overnight temperatures are expected to be warm enough to not cover them anymore, and I could even be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night, too.
The woven bamboo stake trellis I made for the Spoon tomatoes is now dismantled. The tomato cage wall I set up to keep the deer from eating the Super Sugar Snap peas I was leaving to go to seed is down. The soaker hose that was around the Spoon tomatoes and melons was removed, but I’m leaving the one around the winter squash for now. Hoops and stakes and fasteners collected. Most of the stakes with deer distracting pinwheels on them were already set aside. Some of the water bottle noise makers were collected. Not pictured is the post I’ve started using to hold the plastic collars that were around the Spoon tomatoes. I haven’t taken the ones off the melons, yet.
Remarkably, I’m seeing new flowers on the pumpkin vines I thought were killed off. There’s even some melons, still green and trying to bloom. I think the plastic collars actually helped them survive the frosts! My big surprise this morning, though, as finding more bush beans to pick. Only a small handful, but I expect to continue to get little handfuls of beans for at least another couple of weeks, if the weather holds, and I keep watering!
I’ve got a lot more stakes and ties to collect, but I will need to snag possibly both daughters to help me remove the protective netting that is currently pulled up and over the tops of the beds. It needs to be stretched out and straightened before we can fold it up into more manageable sizes, then roll it up for storage, and this particular netting is surprisingly difficult to handle. It snags on EVERYTHING!
As I clean up all the structural stuff, it’s all being brought to the bench by the garden shed for sorting and organizing.
This was the stuff I could do with the time I had this evening. With no outings scheduled, for the next few days I hope to work on more time consuming projects.
I’ve been thinking about that inner wall on the garden bed in the old kitchen garden I’ve been working on. I was going to take out the wattles I’ve got so far, add another stake in between each of the current ones, and find more material to weave a wall. The problem is, even with extra stakes to weave around, I just don’t think I have suitable material for weaving.
So I think I’m going to skip the weaving entirely.
Instead, I’ll do a version of what I think is called a dead hedge, though a very short, narrow version. I’ll be adding vertical stakes to make two rows, a few inches apart, and just lay the horizontals in between them to form the wall. No trying to bend anything. As long as it’s dense enough to hold the soil in, I’ll be happy!
That narrow little bed is taking a ridiculously long time to work on. Lots of experimenting in the process.
That’s just one job I want to work on. Unfortunately, there are so many larger jobs to get done before it starts getting too cold, it gets hard to prioritize which ones need to be started first! Looking at the long range forecast, I’ve got maybe 9 or 10 days before the temperatures start to drop. There’s even a mix of rain and snow in the long range forecast, a little over two weeks from today.
Well, however it works out. As long as I have garden beds ready in October, for planting garlic first, and then doing our winter sowing before the ground freezes.
While doing my morning rounds, three kittens were playing on the hand rail in front of the sun room – but did not what me anywhere near them! They know that rose bush will protect them. 😄
The third image of the garage kittens was from this evening. I went to tie off the catio door for the night, so it won’t blow around. I didn’t even seen them in the cat bed at first! I wasn’t able to get closer, though. I was able to pet them both when I fed them this morning, while they were eating, but that smokey one will not let me touch her, any other time.
Yet.
The littles are all over the place in and around the sun room, and I was able to get a couple of decent shots. That white and black kitten in the last two images has such surprisingly blue eyes!
Sadly, though, we lost another kitten last night. Once again, I found it in the new cat cave in the sun room, like the last one. About the only thing I can say is, at least they passed away in the warmth of a cuddle puddle, and not cold and alone.
Once the morning routing was done, I had time for a quick breakfast before heading out early to my appointment. I wasn’t sure how long things would be, so I made sure to go to the post office before it closed from 11:30am to 2pm. They close for the day at 5pm.
Then, just to be on the safe side, I made sure the packages of seeds were put into an insulated bag, in case the cab of the truck got too hot. I’m glad I did, because yes, it certainly did!
I got to the shopping commons the clinic is at early enough to grab a proper meal for lunch. I’m glad I did because I ended up getting into my 1:30 appointment about 45 minutes late.
The first thing the doctor did was ask how the new prescription was working out. I told what a huge difference it made, and that I’ve hardly had to take any painkillers since I started taking it. She was really happy to hear how well it went. Especially when I told her I have only been taking it once a day, before bed. She commented that I’m already on a low dose (I can take it up to three times a day), so it was really amazing that it’s made such a difference. She commented on how this particular anti-inflammatory is really good, and she thinks it should be prescribed more often. I did mention the one time I took with with just a snack rather than a meal and how that really did a number on my stomach. She was just nodding her head and saying, yup… it does need to be taken with a full meal, because it can be so hard on the stomach, otherwise, and mused that that’s perhaps why it isn’t use more often. All I can say it, it has helped me so much, I’m willing to make the effort to take it properly so that doesn’t happen!
I then told her about my hip issues and asked for X-rays to find out what’s going on. She looked in my file and it’s been more than 5 years since my hips have been X-rayed, so it was time. We already know that I have OA and bone spurs, but something is going on with that left hip that’s making it worse. She wrote me up for a complete pelvic X-ray, so both hips would be checked out.
Then we got to why I was there in the first place. My arm.
I was able to read the report on her monitor with her. They found no anomalies in my shoulder or elbow. Which surprised me, because they do still hurt at times. Especially the shoulder. Which suggests to me that the issue is now soft tissue damage – though the anti-inflammatories are helping with the arm pain, too!
Then there was the hand/wrist. There was a potential anomaly, so they recommended to get it X-rayed again in 1-2 weeks. We were already past that, so she printed out another requisition to get my wrist done again, along with my hips.
As for the follow up, normally they would call me to book a follow up appointment, but I mentioned that my daughter already has an appointment coming up on the 9th, so she said to go ahead and book my follow up then. Which I took care of while picking up my printouts.
Next stop was the hospital, where the lab and X-ray is. Once I gave them the forms, I had time to message the family with an update, and was soon called in for the X-rays. The tech took X-rays of my hand in some very different positions from the last time it was done. At this point, all they can do is confirm whether or not something actually broke in there. After all this time since my fall, it’s not like they’re going to put my wrist in a cast or anything.
Once the hand was done, I got the hips done, and that was it. It was very fast.
That done, it was back to the shopping commons where my doctor’s clinic is, this time to make a quick stop at the grocery store. I hadn’t realized we were out of bread until last night. While I was there, I picked up some sandwich meats that were on sale, and a few other little things.
From there, it was a stop at the gas station and the home.
When I was about 10 minutes from home, I could see the highway ahead of me, disappearing in a cloud of white. It turned out to be an absolute wall of rain! It was coming down hard enough, with so much water on the road, I had to slow down and was about ready to pull over and wait it out. It did lift a bit, though, and I was able to continue. By the time I got home, it had blown over – something I was very happy about, since I needed to get out to open the gate. Particularly since, with the inside handle on the driver’s side door broken off, I need to open the window so I can open the door from the outside.
No complaints about the rain, though. We needed it.
Anyhow.
So all went well with the doctor, though I am surprised nothing showed up in the X-rays for my shoulder and elbow. The shoulder injury it still sometimes an issue, and I was expecting some sort of damage to my rotator cuff. My left elbow has been a problem for a long time, since well before my fall, but that is due to nerve damage, so I guess that wouldn’t show up in an X-ray.
In a couple of weeks or so, I will be back to find out what they find in my hips.
That should be… interesting! I hope I get to actually see the X-rays this time, and not just a report. I’m very curious as to what shows up!
Meanwhile, it is now past time for me to have the supper my daughter made – a nice, substantial meal to take my anti-inflammatories with!
The morning started out as usual, with the feeding of the yard cats and my morning rounds.
Oddly, I seem to be seeing fewer kittens? I think? Meaning the littles that have been showing up in the past couple of weeks. They tend to hide so quickly, I’m not sure, but it just feels like there are fewer of them. The older kittens are still around, but I just can’t get a handle on how many littles there are.
Even though I’d picked up another 9kg back of kibble for the outside cats recently, we were already running out. I was already scheduled to pick up my mother’s bubble packs and do her grocery shopping today, so I decided I would keep going from her place and hit the Walmart. Plus, my husband is having issues with his cracked tooth that won’t be worked on until the middle of next month. So I wanted to pick up foods that were safer for him to eat.
My younger daughter was able to come along with me, which was nice.
My brother, SIL and their older grandson were staying in their trailer this weekend and were going to be heading back to the city soon after I needed to head out, so we made a quick hello and goodbye visit. My great-nephew will be heading home next weekend, before school starts, so I wanted to make sure we got our hugs in!
My daughter and I got to my mother’s town early enough that the pharmacy wasn’t open yet – but the gas station with the best fried chicken and wedges in town had their chicken ready – so we picked up a meal for my mother boxed up separately, then got some for ourselves to eat in the truck. The truck’s seats are more comfortable than the chairs and tables they have in the station. 😄
We still got to the pharmacy just minutes after it opened. My mother’s bubble packs were ready, and most of it was covered this time, so I had very little to pay for it this time. I’m glad I made sure to pick them up today. When I put them in my mother’s lock box, I checked what was there. She had only enough for this evening, plus tomorrow morning. The pharmacy’s records show she should have had enough to last until Wednesday. However, with so many messed up times with her meds, and her abusive behaviour towards the home care aids for not using the partial packs of meds because they were the wrong days, etc., I have taken a few old partial packs back to the pharmacy. They were required to dispose of the meds, which I haven’t mentioned to my mother, or she’d blow a gasket, but it was that or have her constantly harassing the care aids about them. I’ll have to call the pharmacy tomorrow and talk to them about that. They do the bubble packs on the weekends, and that’s cutting it really close for my mother at this point. Better to have her meds prepared earlier. Normally, she would have had them delivered, but that leaves her medications outside the lock box, and she’s already tried hiding a week’s worth of meds away because she doesn’t trust the home care aids.
When we got to my mother’s, it was still not much past noon. Mass was still going on in the church across the street, but I was able to find parking. I wasn’t sure if my mother would have had the energy to make it to church or not, but thought it was unlikely.
I was right. My mother was home and praying the rosary, with her table all set up in preparation for when someone from the church would come by with communion for her. The interruption of us coming when we did messed her up a bit. Which I totally get. When I’m right into something and get interrupted, the mental shift can actually be physically painful.
My brother had given me a new drip pan specifically for my mother’s model of stove, to replace one she has that is completely rusted out for some reason, so I popped that in for her while she got out her shopping list. It was really short this time! We went over it and I asked a few questions, but she said she was well supplied with everything I remembered to ask about.
She was happy to see my daughter, though, and didn’t make any of her usual rude comments, which was nice.
She told us to take our time because she didn’t want to be interrupted when the guy came with communion, but her list was so short, we were back just as church was letting out. My mother was once again thrown by us coming in when we did. I told her that people were just starting to leave church, so we were quick about putting everything away, and making sure her mild carton was opened for her (the local grocery store no longer has 2L milk in plastic jugs, just cartons, and with my mother’s hands, it’s a real struggle to open a carton). My mother was a bit upset about the rush. She had been expecting me to come later, and had been looking forward to being able to “talk for hours and hours”… ??? Especially since my daughter was with me. So she said, no more Sundays for grocery shopping! Which is fine, but I was there today, on a Sunday, so that she could get her medications before running out!
We were in and out quickly, though, and soon on the road to the Walmart. I didn’t take a photo, but it totaled almost $200. Ouch! We got two 9kg bags of kibble, and a package of XXL (30″x30″) puppy pads, plus some on sale TP. Peanut butter, bananas and bread for my husband at times when no one is available to cook for him, and hot dog wieners/hoagies for times when there is someone to cook for him. He can’t chew “real” meat right now, no matter how tender! We got some water flavour packages for him as well. We remembered to grab a couple of containers of popcorn seasoning, and found a charging cable for my daughter’s older phone with a micro-USB port. After that, it was some cheese mini-croissants to snack on for the ride home, and some $1 chocolate bars for each of us as a treat.
I keep thinking I’m forgetting something, but nope. That list is all it took, to cost almost $200.
Once we got home, it was late enough that, while my daughter put away everything else, I refilled the kibble bin and did the evening cat feeding.
Which brings me to the cuteness!
I’ll actually start with a couple of pictures I got, yesterday.
Can you spot the Little in there? One of them has figured out how to climb up to the platform and discovered the cat beds up there. Here, it’s being snuggled by Eyelet on the left, and The Grink on the right.
Can you believe The Grink is about 2 years old? He’s barely bigger than Eyelet!
That black kitten was absolutely snuzzling its face into the tabby. This cat bed is in the back of the water bowl shelter.
When opening the door into the sun room to do this morning’s feeding, I found a while pile of kittens – large and small! – waiting right under the threshold, making it very difficult to step through! I need to be careful, as Sir Robin in particular REALLY wants to be inside. He managed to sneak into the house while my older daughter and I were bringing the cured garlic in, after covering the eggplant for the night, and my daughter found him in the kitchen!
Most of the kittens scatter as I step through, but one kitten didn’t. It stayed loafed and moved its head around, as if confused.
It turned out its eyes were stuck shut, so it had no idea what was going on around it!
I finished putting the food out but, when I got back to the sun room, I couldn’t see the stuck eyed kitten. I finished my rounds and tried looking again before heading inside. That’s when I spotted a little white kitten bum through the opening of the new cat cave.
It’s a bit difficult to get close, since it’s in a shelf, and I need to step around food trays and the little plant stand that’s there for the cats to use to get to the platform. I was able to reach in and felt a couple of kittens in there, but managed to get the white butted kitten. Once I got it out, I could confirm it was the one with the stuck eyes. It wasn’t happy, but I was able to get it to the bathroom and into the bathtub to chill a bit, while I ran the hot water in the sink while getting something to wipe its eyes with.
The kitten wasn’t happy about being picked up again, but stopped fighting me once I started washing its eyes. Once both eyes were cleared, it just started up at me for a while. This kitten is mostly white with grey “eyebrows”, like Button, Eyelet and Grommet – but where Button and Eyelet have blue eyes, and Grommet has yellowish eyes, this one has really dark eyes!
Once done, I took it back to the sun room and tucked it back into the cat cave. Then I used my phone’s camera to take a picture and see who else was in there.
There were AT LEAST six kittens in there! Including another one that could have used an eye wash. It’s amazing I was able to grab the right kitten right from the start!
That little tabby with white in the foreground… he always looks so furious! 😄
As we were getting ready to head out, I went to open the gate first and spotted this adorableness, under the truck.
This is the garage kitten that will sometimes let me pet him and pick him up.
Still no such progress with his sibling (I’m about 98% sure the smokey one is a female).
Yes, we ALWAYS check the truck before starting it and driving.
After we got back from errands and the evening feeding was done, I did my evening rounds. As I was heading in, I spotted Lady Hypotenose on top of the cat cage… and what was that not far from her?
We already have a cat we call Ink, because she looks like she got into a pot of ink with her mouth and paws. This one also looks like it got into some ink.
We’re debating whether to call it Spot or Blot.
What do you think?
I did try to do a head count of the littles this morning, and I think I counted twelve but, as I mentioned earlier, I’m pretty sure some are “missing”. Especially the ones that showed up in the junk pile by the chain link fence, instead of the sun room or cat shelters by the house. It could be that they’ve been moved on by their mothers, or they simply didn’t happen to be out while I was putting the food out.
The next few weeks will be ones to keep an eye on them. This is the stage where, if they are going to get hit with the local variant of herpes, now will be it. That’s the ones with the leaky eyes, and that’s what did in Kale and, I’m sure, Zipper. This year, though, not all the kittens got it. Poirot’s babies have had zero issues, nor have the outer yard kittens that started out coming to the shrine feeding station (they are now willing to go right into the sun room!). The garage kittens have shown no sign if it, either. It looks like some of the littles are resistant.
From what the Cat Lady told me, that would be because of the lysine we’ve been adding to their food for the past year or two. For the cats that are already struggling with the virus, I’m told it’s “lysine for life”, and if they stop getting the lysine, they can get really sick again. BUT, it benefits the next generation, and they can not need it at all. That’s what I seem to be seeing now, with the littles. In fact, at this point, it seems like more of them are resistant than not.
Still, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen over the next few weeks. Which means we might start finding losses.
Well, it is what it is, and there’s not much we can do about it, that we aren’t already doing.
The Re-Farmer
[addendum: I was curious as to what WP’s AI image generator would come up with based on the contents of this post.
The Re-Farmer 